Tick Tock

I'm in the middle of hour 5 of my 24 hour take home exam, and things aren't going so well as is evidenced by the fact that I'm blogging. I keep looking at my screen, typing words, and then erasing. And if I use the word count feature one more time, it may break. My problem is that I know what I want to say, but I just can't say it without tripping all over myself or sounding like a complete moron. Which are 2 things I do rather well, I must say. I'm hoping this wave of prolific fluency will hit any minute now.

Bridge the Problem

The Boston State Highway Patrol needs to spend more time patrolling and less time watching sci-fi movies. In a move of brilliance, the patrol has suggested that someone invent a spider-gun to capture would be suicide jumpers on bridges by casting a net over them. Apparently this is their best solution for fixing traffic problems caused when someone climbs out on the ledge and threatens to jump. Why don't they just suggest lowering the bridges closer to the water, that way it makes it less attractive as a suicide option? That sounds just about as plausible.

I'm more worried about the malfunctioning drawbridge that apparently opened while a man and his kids were going across in a minivan. The report says that the man couldn't turn back but had to speed up and jump the gap to save themselves. I think he too has been watching too many movies.

Drawbridges scare me in the first place, since I have this thing about being over water [oops forgot about that phobia] and now that I know they malfunction, they scare me even more. I guess if Boston lowered their bridges as I suggested, they'd have to make them drawbridges so the boats could pass. Let's just all take the subway and save the environment anyway.

Theft by any other name.

An ATM in London was found to be paying out double the amount requested earlier this week. The drawer for 10s was accidently filled with 20s so it was doubling the money without charging the account for the other half.

Over a $158 thousand dollars was withdrawn from that ATM, and the line to use it stretched most of the way down the street. What absolutely amazes me is that people told all of their friends, took advantage of this, but apparently no one told the bank. What makes people think they have a right to steal from the bank in this way? And yes, it is stealing. Do our societies have no sense of right and wrong anymore?

The bank says that they're not making them pay the money back, which just encourages them to do the same thing if it ever happens again. They have a record of who withdrew, and I'm sure they've got a video camera in the machine that can show everyone's elated and sneaky looks when they get too much money. Although they might not know how much each person got, they could at least charge them a penalty fee for not reporting the malfunctioning ATM. There is a good argument that this was conspiracy to commit theft.

Phobias, Fears and Aversions, Oh My!

I'm trying to find an new picture so I can change the scheme of this blog because I'm getting a little bored with it. While I was looking through pics, I ran across this pic which best illustrates a phobia of mine. I only have one serious phobia, that I know of, and I've tried to explain it to some people. They tend to look at me like I'm either crazy or delusional. I am both, but not for this reason.

I have this phobia of scattered dots. I can handle dots in straight lines or colored patterns, but something about shifting them into an erratic pattern makes it unbearable. It makes me think of swarms or bacteria, and really just gives me the heebie jeebies. I can't even look at that picture because it gives me goose bumps and I start shuddering. I know that this is a real phobia, as I heard the name once but can't remember it. And I know at least 3 other people who have it, including a fellow law student we all know and love.

The Phobia List is a great source for learning big words and self-diagnosing your own phobias. It's also great if you have a burning desire to know what it's called if you have a fear of sermons (Homilophobia) or a fear of being tickled with feathers (Pteronophobia). I also love how the fear of long words happens to have the longest name on the list (Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia).

Purity

As you can tell, I'm really not doing so well with this "I should be studying" thing. Perhaps most of you aren't either. If you need a distraction, please feel free to take The Ultimate Purity Test. And if you're really daring, share your score. I know this has been out there for a while, and we've probably all done it before and shared our results. But in my old age, I can't seem to remember. And I'm so bored, I don't even care. I'm here to facilitate procrastination, and I hope I live up to that duty.

Un-Friendly

A claim for harassment made by a former writer's assistant on the Friends staff has been reinstated. The woman alleges that different members of the writing staff would use "lewd" language when talking about their personal lives and even when discussing "what they would like to do with the actors."

I find this claim intriguing. If the conversations detailed in the affidavit did take place, I must say I would have been a bit uncomfortable too. Though I'm sure a TV show writing room is not the same as a corporate office, it is still sexual harassment. I'm interested to know how this plays out.

I'm also curious as to whether the actors themselves would have any recourse if it is found that the writers did make these statements. I would assume not. Maybe my Freedom of Speech people can enlighten me. Kelly P.? Chuck?

Conformity

Yesterday I finally caved to the rolling bag phenomenon. Yes, I realize it is the end of my second year, and it would probably have been more useful had I bought it earlier in my law school career. But then I can be a bit stubborn in avoiding the "trend" and I really only bought it because it was on sale yesterday and I had a coupon. I'm sure my chiropractor will be overjoyed.

Today I proceeded to roll it into walls, people's legs, and curbs. I'm a klutz to begin with and I don't think I accurately judge how much room it needs to get around objects. Not to mention I spent half of the day carrying it by the shoulder strap because I wanted to take the stairs, or because my shoulder hurt after the bag was caught and stopped moving but I continued walking. Perhaps I'm not really solving the back problems but simply creating a new cause for them.

What's in a name?

A man running for office in Vigo Co. is named Dave Crockett. What parent does that to their child?

Out of the closet, Out on a limb

A gay couple in NYC climbed a tree in central park to protest the parent's non-acceptance of their relationship. The two performed sexual acts, while up in the tree, as various on-lookers stood by. What the two Einsteins apparently failed to recognize is that one member of the duo is only 17. And I'm pretty that's below the legal age of consent in NY. I wouldn't count on any of the family members to bail them out of jail.

Walk this Way

My family and church are sponsoring a team in the annual Relay for Life next weekend. For those not familiar, it's the fundraiser for cancer research. Our team is in honor of my younger brother, who is a cancer survivor. However, chances of him actually showing up for the walk are slim since he wants nothing to do with us most of the time. Last year, he and I were given the 3-5 a.m. walking shifts. The thinking was that he and I stay up late most of the time so it should be no problem for us. However, the parents failed to take into account that it was during our finals so altering our sleep schedules was not exactly the best idea.

This year, they've decided we need a theme for our team. Last year we won the award for the most money raised, but we looked disorganized compared to the othe groups who brought tents, matching outfits, etc. I still think we should pride ourselves on being the only team to have a walker walking during the entire 24 hours while every other team gave up early to focus on sychronized dancing and such. But they're insisting on a theme.

They decided they wanted to do a Mexican atmosphere with chili peppers, Mexian hats and blankets, and "fake" margaritas. I walked in while they were discussing this, and they had came up with a team name "Hot Mamas." I expressed my veto for this idea, to no avail. I don't really have much pull in this area. It was only after I asked them to think of my brother in all this that they reconsidered. I told them to picture him walking up to the registration table to get his survivor t-shirt.

T-shirt lady: Hi, what team are you with?
Brother: Uh....I'm a 'Hot Mama'.
T-shirt lady: Wait, I'm sorry, what did you say?
Brother: I'm a 'Hot Mama'.

So the "Hot Mamas" were abandoned. I think they settled on the "Hot Tamales." The name still sucks, but at least I don't feel like a 65 yr old grandma wanting to relive my youth.

Parting Gifts

I finished my internship with the Court today, and to be honest, I'm a bit sad about it. I don't like goodbyes, and I am never very good at keeping in touch. So I will have to remind myself that I promised to drop by occasionally or send them updates about my life. I think I was spoiled in that I got to work with great people, who made me feel comfortable instead of inept and ignorant. After hearing stories from other court interns of the lack of interaction between staff, I'm thankful I got placed somewhere where everyone was personable and genuinely liked working together. Though they kept thanking me for the work I did, which helped lighten their load, I maintain that I got the better end of the deal. Afterall, I get to put on my resume that I interned for a Justice on the state Supreme Court.

I also received a few souvenirs to remind me of my stint there; a Supreme Court coaster, mug, pen, and pencils. But my favorite item by far is the 8X10 black and white glossy of the sitting bench, autographed by every Justice. Visit my office in a few years and that will be framed and on the wall. I guarantee it.

Lead by Example

I'm glad that I'm being represented well by my Congressman these days. John Hostettler, my U.S. representative, was detained yesterday after he tried to board a plane, but was forgetting that he had a loaded handgun in his bag.

I'm still perplexed as to how you can forget about your deadly weapon when I can remember to turn my cell phone off when getting to the airport. I may be more disturbed about the fact that he apparently doesn't know where his loaded gun is at all times. Isn't that a bigger safety hazard?

Fret Dreams

It's finals time again, and I'm waiting for the first night I wake up in a cold sweat, just knowing I've slept through a final or that I checked the schedule wrong and the final was last week, not next week. It doesn't help that I'm taking exams on alternate days, since all of my exams were scheduled within 48 hours, so I have to keep track of what days I moved each exam to.

What's funny is that my dad starts to have the same sort of dreams when I am in finals even though he hasn't been in school for about 30 years. It doesn't help that it actually happened to him once. He and I have similar study patterns, and he told me when I was an undergrad about the time he studied harder for a final than he ever had. He decided to take one section of his notes, study it for days, and then move on to the next section. When he got to the last page of notes, he saw that he had written down the exam time had been changed... to 2 days ago. So he flat out missed the entire final.

Luckily for him he went to the professor's office and he was understanding and let him take it late, without penalty. This still shocks me since he went to one of the largest Big Ten schools and usually professors are so busy they don't want to mess with the problems of one student. But I guess he and my brother share the quality where they can talk their ways into or out of any situation. Somehow, I don't think I inherited that trait.

Phone-knapped

Kevin Spacey came clean today that he falsely reported an assault in London. He claims now that he fell for a con while he was walking his dog at 4 a.m. He handed the phone over when a boy said he needed to use it, and instead the boy took off running. Spacey called the cops and reported an assault, later claiming that he was so embarrassed that he had been duped, that he thought the police would just find the kid and his cell a few blocks away.

Wouldn't it have been less embarrassing to cancel the cell plan and suck up the cost of the phone, as opposed to and later having to admit that not only were you duped by a con man, you've now lied to the police and filed a false report?

Outage

Our power went out about 20 minutes ago, which means the only thing saving my sanity is the 50 minutes or so of battery I have left on this laptop. I know it comes as a shock to some that my town even has electricity and running water. Frankly, some days it surprises even me.

I have to leave here by 4 to go to another law school function, so I don't consider an hour and 15 minutes ample time to do something productive. Nor am I looking forward to the hour and a half drive up there after I made the round trip last night. I thought about going outside to enjoy the beautiful weather, but then realized I'd probably get sweaty, which means I'd have to shower, and we have no power to run the hair dryer. I wouldn't care except this is one of those functions where you have to get dressed up more than jeans and a t-shirt. So instead I'll just waste more time doing nothing.

For those of you who were intrigued by an earlier post and need to know the definition of "tossing your salad", stay tuned to Chuck's blog as it is the quiz of the week and a definition is forthcoming.

Sex Talks

My parents, as you can probably guess, are a bit on the prudish side. We never had the sex talk when we were growing up and they about flipped out when they found a couple of Cosmo mags in my sister's room. They do not watch R rated movies (with the exception of The Passion) because of the sex and profanity, and I make sure I'm not in the room if they're watching a show on TV and I know something is coming up. Their attitudes are pretty much the same as the rest of our town, which is probably why our county had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation when I graduated.

So you can imagine my shock when my mom starts talking about sexual fetishes during dinner.

A few weeks ago, she was sharing her newest knowledge of sex terms when she learned what "tossing the salad" was from an episode of Oprah. Then came the discussion of "rainbow parties" and how the junior highers around here were having them. The other night, she brought up "living on the downlow" which she learned from a Law and Order ep. Sadly, she missed today's Oprah which was covering the same topic.

She has been asking me lately to show her what a blog is, and I thought I'd choose something clean cut and profanity free. But I'm reconsidering and thinking maybe she'd benefit from seeing Chuck's blog. I'm sure she'd act shocked and appalled at the "Is this a legal term or bizarre sex act?" quiz, but then bring it up at dinner to show her vast knowledge. I just don't know if I could deal with her starting to answer the questions correctly.

Bad boys.

My mom is a 4th grade teacher at the "inner city" elementary in our town. Since our town is only about 8000 people, you can imagine the terror that happens there. I get home tonight, and my mom starts relaying the latest trauma on the playground. After school, she was walking to her car and saw two kids on the playground playing with [take a deep breath, this is really shocking] a lighter. Yes kids, you heard me right. A lighter. To make matters worse, the girl had taken a cigarette butt out of the trash and was trying to light it. All the while running around barefoot.

She actually had to call her principal to tell her what was going on, and then asked me what the law says about parents who leave lighters around for their kids to find. I had to hold back my laughter, as I told her that it wasn't illegal for a kid to have a lighter. Then, honest to God, I heard her telling my dad it won't be long until the kids are hiding guns on the playground instead of lighters.

Not only does smoking cause cancer, possessing a lighter leads to serial killers. Consider yourself warned.

4 down 2 to go.

I had my final class of the semester yesterday. And that's a little weird to me. Though the semester is not really over until I finish with finals, it's a bit scary to think that I only have 2 semesters of classes yet. I know so little. And it shows.

Predictions

Since I did so stellarly on both the Oscars and the NCAA tournament... I decided to try my hand at the Apprentice. Banking on my track history, I'd go with the person I don't choose. But my prediction is that it's going to be Bill. He's shown more leadership and even though he lacks the education Kwame possesses, I think he's just the better man for the job. So we'll see how that all pans out tonight.

On a side note, I've realized in reading over former posts, that my spelling is horrendous. Which is unusual because I'm usually OK at spelling. I think when I start typing my thoughts I spell phonetically. And rather than go back and correct the spellings, I just cringe when I read that I spelled "racquet" as "raquet" or worse "racket". I realize that Blogger has a spell checker, but really, what fun is that?

Trunk Treasures

I was reading this article on CNN [about a girl who survived 10 days after a car accident by eating noodles and Gatorade that were in the car] and realized that if I were ever stranded in my car, I'm certain I have nothing in my car that will help me survive. I've heard that people can tell a lot about you based on what's in your trunk. I'm a little afraid to ask what my trunk says about me. Currently its contents are:

inflatable air bed
Balderdash
tennis raquet
Con Law book (from last semester)
Longaberger candle and votive
2 boxes of cat litter
metal lock box
box of Kleenex
CD cases
A ziploc bag of homemade questions for True Colors that I had to remove before my sister borrowed the game.
1 glove and a scarf

Actually, now that I look at it, I'm thinking it says I need to clean out my car.

I need Tivo

The President will be pre-empting most shows tonight to give an address on a topic I would know if I paid any attention to current events. It's times like these I'm glad I watch shows on the WB which only get pre-empted for Pacers or IU and Purdue Basketball. It's sad when your station will pre-empt for sports but not a Presidential address.

And I thought I was bored.

Let me preface this by saying there's absolutely nothing wrong with linking academic or intellectually stimulating articles on your site/blog if indeed your blog caters to the academic types. I hope everyone recognizes by now that this is not one of those blogs.

That said, if someone catches me posting the link to a webcast for Congressional hearings on this site, please, please shoot me first and ask questions later.

Fading

I checked my site statistics a while ago, and learned that my stats are actually going down. Which didn't really surprise me since I haven't had much to say recently. And when I do have something to say, blogger won't let me. I've tried posting a few times and it will "time out" on me and I'm too lazy to type the whole thing up and try again. Since I have such a short memory, it's not like I remember what I said to begin with.

Basically, this post has no point. So it ties into the theme of this blog lately. I just wish someone had a cure for blogger's block.

Mindless Movies

I took my cousins to see a sneak preview of the movie "13 Going on 30" tonight. Actually, I say I took them but it really was them tagging along because I was going to go regardless. I enjoyed the movie. It was predictable, trite, and required no thinking. Just my kind of movie. I thought Jen Garner did a great job acting like a 13 year old, and the 1980s references were funny. Of course my cousins, being that they are 12 and 14, didn't get any of those and stared at me blankly when I was chuckling.

People have called this a remake of "Big", and in a way, it was. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a decent movie. The theater was pretty packed and people were laughing out loud throughout and some even clapped at the end. So the moral of the story is, don't trust the critics' reviews when they come out and bash this movie no end. Take a chance.

Truth

Prof. Bowman just asked our Evidence class: "Who are judges anyway?"

His answer: "Judges are just lawyers who happen to be friends of the governor."

So true.

Retro Post: Don't try this at home.

Last night, my hour and fifteen minute commute turned into a 2 hour commute thanks to airport construction and lane closures. Starting at 8:00 p.m. they shut down all Westbound lanes on the interstate for 20 min. at a time, and when they reopen, only about 40 cars get to go through before they shut it down again. Which just frustrates me no end when I don't get home until after 10:00. And what better way to segue into Amanda Y's favorite post from my old blog. And yes, it's a long one.

I debated calling this entry “tire go boom”. Yeah, it’s been one of those days. I’m driving to school through the wonderful construction by the airport. Now, this construction will be going on till 2016. And I’m not exaggerating. Usually it just adds a few minutes to my journey, or if it’s after 8 at night, they shut down all the lanes for 20 minutes at a time. But neither of those have ever cost me money.

But today, my car starts shaking and making weird noises like I’m going over rumble strips. So I let off the gas a bit, and keep praying I’ll make it to the next exit. I get almost there and I hit the brakes lightly. And as I do, my tire blows out, jerking my car back and forth before I finally get it off to the side of the road. At this point all I can smell is rubber, and smoke is billowing out and around my car. So I’m officially freaking out as I do any time something happens to my car. After a couple of minutes, I get out to look, and my front tire is in shreds. Parts of the rubber are all over the place in a 10 meter radius from my car.

So I did what any self respecting, independent woman of this millennium would do. I called daddy. And waited, and waited as dad tried to find a number on the internet for a wrecking service. (Now under normal circumstances, I’d like to think that I would change my own tire. But this time, I was barely out of the interstate lanes of traffic and it was my front driver’s side tire. And I had these visions of being on some Fox special ‘dumb drivers making big mistakes’ or something like that.) So after 20 minutes and 3 state cops pass right by me, my dad finally gets me a number for a wrecker.

I call the wrecking place, and she tells me that they will be there in 15 minutes. The place is located about 2 miles away and she assured me he would be leaving there in the next couple of minutes. An hour and a half later, the guy shows up. I’m a bit peeved by this point, and I get out of my car and help the guy find my spare. I can barely hear him since the trucks flying by are so loud, but he’s lecturing me about the do's and don'ts of standing on the interstate and making some sort of small talk about being late because he had to shower.

Now this is wrong for so many reasons. First, I’ve been sitting in my car for an hour and a half choking on the smell of rubber while the car shakes every time a car/truck speeds by at 70mph. And second, now I’m standing outside being practically blown over every time someone flies by, and now this guy is telling me he "freshened up" for the occasion. I swear I didn’t stage this whole thing because I was really trolling for dudes in wrecking trucks, so why the hell would I care if you smell bad.

So tire changed (for a charge of $35 of course) and I have to get a new one because I can’t drive back home on the spare. Cut to half an hour later at the tire place. (When you live in the middle of BFE it takes forever to get anywhere). Tire guy is really nice, comes out to inspect the shredded wheat that is my former tire in my trunk, and then goes to check the computer. Then he comes to tell me that he doesn’t have a tire in my size and that I could hang around for 4 hours till one comes in. Which leads me to 2 points. 1, why the hell can’t they make tires in standard sizes. And 2, how the hell do you run a tire place, where the sole thing you do is sell tires, and you don’t have one in my size.

Luckily for me, there was a competing tire place not 10 feet from this one, and they did have my size in stock. For a grand total of $70 bucks, it would be on my car in less than a half hour. That gets done, and at this point, I realize that if I left now, I would make it to class just on time. Nevermind the fact that there is no parking at that time of day, and I’d probably spend a hour driving around for a spot. And my nerves are all a bit shot. Needless to say, I came home to rest the rest of the day, and of course let you all know about it.

Religious Persecution

This car in front of me tonight had a couple of sheets of paper in the window that said, "I gave up speeding for Lent. Please be patient with me."

I'm sure that's going over about as well as it would if I showed up to class wearing a sign that said, "I gave up reading for Lent. Please refrain from calling on me."

Jackpot

Why is it that people who win big in casinos are people who don't need it? Perhaps it's because they are the only ones who can afford to vacation in those places and spend the big bucks. Over the weekend, Jennifer Lopez's Mother won $2.4 million on the slots in Atlantic City. A few years ago, I was in Vegas and John Elway's wife won a little over 6 million on the slots. She was just passing by a machine and decided to play a few coins. (Actually, now that I think about it, it may have been Joe Montana's wife. It was some retired NFL quarteback's wife, that's all I know.)

I guess it puts it into perspective though when the article mentions that with just her prize, J Lo's mom still couldn't buy the infamous pink engagement ring.

Random Trivia: Part 2

One of my brother-in-law's favorite stories is to tell about how the lead singer of REM (Michael Stipe?) went to his high school in the lovely town of Collinsville, IL. Apparently, at that time, he had a band with a few of his friends and they played local gigs around the area. They asked to play at the school prom, and were denied because the school didn't think they were good enough. And for years and years afterward, this is all they can talk about. It's a small town, what do you expect?

But even more random... Collinsville is a former hometown of one of my classmates (who shall remain nameless unless she cares to reveal herself) who went to elementary school with my bro-in-law. I've actually seen the yearbook and confirmed it with my own eyes. The bro-in-law is distrought over the fact that she doesn't remember him, since he thought he was the coolest 3rd grader in the school at the time. But classmate's cousins ran in the same circles and remembered bro-in-law well enough to stop and talk to him at a bank a few weeks ago. All goes to show you that it really is a small, small world.

Retro post: Baby Oh baby

[This post appeared on my old blog last year and Kelly P. has suggested it be copied over here while I'm still having Bloggers' block.]

If hell were personalized for each one of us, I've decided that mine would be a 24 x 7 string of baby showers. It's that time of my life. A few years ago I had to go through all of the marriages, and now it's the babies. And there's nothing more degrading then being the sole single person amongst your group of friends. I had a hard time bonding with any of them over how much spitup is normal for a 2 month old.

But I started out with my trip to Wal-Mart for a gift. She had registered there, so I printed off the list here at home and took it to the store. First of all, the list didn't include any pictures, and the descriptions were something like (10 pk lsr dpr pl bg). Um, yeah. Those serial codes really help too. And have you been in the baby section lately? Nothing is in a logical order. Having no kids, I assumed that it would be organized relatively easily. Bottles and bottle accessories here. Clothing there. And diapers over there. Walking down an aisle it was more like; diaper, bottle, gate, bottle, washcloth, gas-powered tree trimmer, bath tub, soap, brand x diapers... You get the point.

So finally, I settled on the bath tub and shampoo and soap accessories. All from the list. Which I found out later means nothing. Because I stuck to the list and got what she wanted, someone else went out and got the Lexus version of the baby bath and made me look like a cheapskate. Bah.

And we only played one game, which shockingly I won. Granted, I cheated with my friend next to me. But still, I got the gift, opened it, and it was a candle and votive. And then I had to decide whether that was something I was supposed to keep, or if this is one of those parties where I'm actually supposed to turn around and give it back to the mom. Friend told me that since it wasn't babyish, I was supposed to keep it, which still garnered scowls from the cheap seats.

All in all, it wasn't too terrible. I sat and "oooh-ed and awwwed" with the best of them. And I caught up with a friend I hadn't seen in years. (We were trying to decide how long it had been, and I realized that it was at least before she was pregnant. Her son is almost 3 now. Guess that solves it). And I'm having lunch with the mommie-to-be tomorrow so I hope to get all the behind the scenes details.

My mom always brings up the fact that by the time I get married, all my friends will be established and they may not remember what it's like to go through the showers for the first time. This has led me to one conclusion. When I get married, or have kids, I'm only asking for one thing. Big ass gifts. After all, isn't that the true reason we keep in contact with our childhood friends?

Registration 101

I swear the law school is trying to kill me. Today I nearly had a heart attack registering for classes because of the new-fangled system and the fact that I didn't pay attention to the 45 emails that warned me about the changing system. As an IU alum I'd used the old system all through undergrad and law school, so I was fairly comfortable with it. And I don't like change. To add to it all it probably didn't help that I decided what classes I wanted at about 7:58 when I had to register at 8.

I got onto the system, selected the classes, and then clicked the done button. Seemed simple enough. It took me through a bunch of pages asking me if I wanted to rent a locker and if my address was correct. Got through it, and on the confirmation page it told me "You are registered for 0 classes."

I finally figured out the system after much cursing and clicking on random buttons. I ended up at some blank page that said something along the lines of "if you think you do a better job finding the classes, just try it yourself." Somehow I clicked the right button to get out of that before I ended up in ceramics or scuba diving. I'm sure the system is easier had I gotten a course list with the 5-digit numbers. Instead, all I had was the visual layout and had to search out each course.

But I can't complain now because I seemed to have had less of a hassle than others. And I got the classes I needed. Since everyone else is doing it, and I'm such a follower, I feel the need to post my schedule.

Commercial Paper
Admin Law
Mediation
Church and State
Interviewing and Counseling

At least that's what I think I registered for..... I changed so many times, I'm not exactly sure anymore. As Chuck said it best, I didn't get the classes I wanted because they're not offering the classes I wanted next semester. It would have been perfect had I wanted to take tax, state tax, local tax, gift tax, state and local tax, tax evasion, and taxing the tactless. But even I'm not that stupid.

Dyslexia

I've been reading through the archives of the blog I linked a few posts ago. Actually, it's a lot like reliving 1st year law school. Very intriguing. Except for the post where he refers to the "University of Indiana."

Lost in Translation.

[I haven't been posting because I can't think of anything to say. I thought about importing some posts from the old blog that were relevant today, but I can't think of any. But if any long time readers have a favorite post you want to recommend for days when I have nothing to say, please do. I've learned that I'm a lot less inclined to post about my family now that I am no longer anonymous. And without making fun of my family, I have precious little left to talk about.]

Before last summer, I had never been out of North America. And then I went on my law school's European law program and visted 7 countries in Europe. Rather than do something productive (like finding a job) I am spending part of my summer in China through the China law program. We went to buy our tickets yesterday and the price had gone up $500 overnight. Instead of paying $1100 for a ticket, the cost was now $1600. Since we didn't want to pay that, we looked around and did some searches for a multi-city ticket. Turns out, for $1200 we could fly to Beijing, and then after our program fly to Tokyo and spend a few days there. And with the price of hotels, it's actually cheaper to do that. So instead of simply flying to China and back, we've now added a couple of days in Japan.

After I get home, I have to join the parents on a 2 week trip to Honduras. (A missionary trip if you must know....the Jesus house doesn't up and take vacations for nothing.) They have this misconceived notion that I actually remember any of the Spanish I learned in my 5 years of classes. They'll be surprised when we get down there and all I can do is find a bathroom or tell someone I like their dog. But anything that gets me out of Indiana for a bit longer is worth my time.