Ms. Ass: “…I get what he’s saying about names. My parents love me, but my initials are “A.S.S.”
I was only briefly traumatized in 2nd grade when the 5th graders found out… but in undergrad, Bumble University used our initials as our email address. So when applying to law school, I had to get documentation from Bumble U that I did not pick “ASSØØ4@bumble.edu” to be my email.”
Judd: “…was…was that a gunshot?” Me: “Welcome to the neighborhood. Lemme sleep.” Judd: “…WHAT? Aren’t you going to call the police?” Me: “…if I called the police every time I heard a gunshot…” Judd: “But this is RIGHT underneath you…” Me: “I have international tax law at 8:30am. If I call the police I won’t be awake for class.”
Professor W: “What’s so wrong with swearing? The most wonderful word in the English language is that four letter word that begins with “f” and ends with “k.”
Middle Aged Lady: “Can I tell you guys something? When I was young I thought I was special. I thought was really special! I thought I was so special that I thought I would have a virgin birth! And it has taken me 55 years to realize I AM NOT SPECIAL. I AM NOT SPECIAL AT ALL!”
I understand why people move to the exurbs now. I live by downtown Minneapolis and I feel perpetually harassed by junkies, crazies, and homeless people.
The apartment underneath mine is essentially a group home for Native Americans with substance abuse problems. I could not get a full night’s sleep last week because of the constant midnight screaming and crashes from downstairs. The commotion also wakes up the dogs who think: “WE ARE UP! POTTY TIME!” …so I end up walking them at 4am.
The 4am dog walks suck because the random gunfire has started up again. Last week I heard gunshots on two of the nighttime dog walks and once from my downstairs neighbors. I should just let my dogs shit in front of the Indians’ door. That’ll show them.
I feel like I live on the set of Grand Theft Auto. The sirens of ambulances and firetrucks are an omnipresent buzz. There are junkies passed out in the hallway and people having drug-trips in the middle of the street. The neighborhood tree lawns are seeded with broken glass from smashed car windows and there are shootouts at night (and occasionally during the middle of the day.)
But I do not live in the ghetto – my apartment building is surrounded by schools, trendy restaurants, and expensive condos. There are million-dollar mansions next to group homes and shooting victims hunched in front of banquet halls. Some people call this a gentrifying or eclectic neighborhood, but I consider it bizarre.
So the Indians scream all night and I spend my days in a zombie-like state from the sleep deprivation. I’m tired. I’m unproductive. The work piles up and the cycle of suck begins until I feel cranky, whiny, and defeated. And don’t be fooled by their smiling faces –
…because these beasts choose my most feeble and upsetting moments to unleash the equivalent of a WW1 mustard gas attack. I’m exhausted, have tax law reading to do, and then I get smacked with 200-pounds of dog fart. It’s just awful. I’m the one sobbing the corner.
Actually, part of my problem is my inability to truly feel sorry for myself. (I want a pity party damn it!) It is impossible to feel sorry for myself when I am surrounded with so many impoverished people with chemical dependency and mental illness issues.
The drunk Indian passed-out across the street has real problems. The junkie dumpster diving for my credit card information has real problems. The guy shot down the block has real problems…
My love handles, tiredness, and farting dogs don’t seem to make the cut.
Some people call this “being grounded” but I am pretty sure that this outlook hurts me academically because I cannot muster as much “freak the fuck out” as some of my peers. I study until I understand the material, but I don’t put in the dramatic library time of some of my peers because a B- isn’t going to end my world.
What amuses me is that there is always a little thought in the back of my head of “maybe I should put in as much time as Jill Smith...” BUT LET ME BE VERY CLEAR: I think the students undergoing vitamin D deprivation because of their library time are ridiculous.
These students spend 80 hours a week studying on the off-chance that Fancy, Prestige, & Schmancy, LLC will stop laying off partners just long enough to condescend to hire them to work 80 hours a week.
My goodness. I couldn’t do it! I have a social life, exercise regime, and farting dogs to attend to… I just hope I don’t get mugged by the neighborhood junkies while doing so.
The past two weeks whizzed by. I don’t know what to say.
And yes, I was determined to use that blurry picture. The picture is of Porky’s in St. Paul. Porky’s is like a ghetto Sonic restaurant: grease and onions. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for days and I wanted to bleach my mouth. It was worse than Culver’s and I am never going back. Oh, the horror…
I didn’t write a post last week because I had nothing charitable to say about school.
I knew there was a problem when I walked out of school so irritated that my jaw was clenched. Family law had just sucked 3 hours of my day and I was disgusted by some of my classmates.
Family law has 100 students. A handful of these students monopolize class time with inappropriate comments and not-so-relevant personal anecdotes. Walking around offended by the social ineptness of others is stupid and counter-productive, and I am no longer doing it. If I could deal with the freshmen of the University of Miami for three years as a resident assistant, then the douchebaggery of a few law students should not bother me.
Besides school, everything else was constant during the past two weeks: I am still bumbling around campus, roaming about Minneapolis, studying at coffee shops, cubicle-dwelling with my hilarious coworkers, and doing a lot of freelance graphic design work. Tis the season for design jobs apparently…
And then there’s Juddson, the boyfriend who is somehow not sick of me yet. He humors me even when I feel cranky and ridiculous, and he doesn’t even charge extra! This is Judd and Jabroni(his roommates’s dog):
Jabroni was over for a day while Judd dog-sat for his roommate. Gertrude felt threatened and refused to let me pet Jabroni. I feel loved, I think?
I also managed to revive my exercise schedule during the past two weeks. I bought K2 inline skates and started zipping around the lakes. The new exercise schedule culminated on Saturday with a 32-mile round-trip skate to work. The epic skate took close to 4-hours and my hindquarter felt kicked. This should become a weekly event.
This week I will increase the workouts and switch back to my hippie-diet (organic, non-processed foods, no gluten, soy, or lactose.) A full Operation Shrink a Gut update is coming soon. Where’s Brandon?
I encourage the 1Ls to blog, especially when they are busy. “The busy times are when it is most important to blog!” I say. “You’ll thank yourself for writing!”
So of course I don’t condescend to blog when I get busy. Do as I say, not as I do right? I feel like a governor…
Luckily the free-for-all that is “discussion time” in my family law class is the perfect time to blog! I am so not slacking at this…
So, what happened last week?
Well, the most exciting thing about last week was the heat! I think it got to 80 degrees one day, but maybe I’m exaggerating… maybe it was 90 degrees, or 100…
Regardless, it was warm, and the grass came out:
The undergrads now lounge-about outside, and the scandalous daisy dukes have arrived. Hopefully this also means an end to the leggings epidemic that hit campus this winter! (Leggings are still not pants by the way…)
The great thaw is also exciting because Minnesotan drivers don’t do well with melting snow:
I’ve seen more car wrecks in the past few weeks than during the worst snowfall. Although this may have something to do with the amount of cars hidden in snow-filled ditches…I think the situation will improve now that the roads are dry and ice-free, but I’m probably wrong.
Other than the car wrecks and heat, last week was also the week of the work-out. I made to the gym about 4 times and constantly walked the dogs around the lakes.
My apartment building has also resumed its craziness. There are constantly drunks lounging in the stairway, people passed out in the hallway, mystery smells, and one of my neighbors must have given up walking her dog because there are little nuggets of joy waiting for me on the back stairs most mornings. Delicious.
And I would be remiss for not mentioning the boyfriend, but it’s hard to describe a new relationship without a fatty serving of cheese, so, let’s just say he’s so smoking hot that sometimes he looks like his pants caught fire:
That’s from Pechmans recreational fire…and no, Judd didn’t actually catch fire… I think…
So…my family law class has graduated to a new level of ridiculous. Some of my classmates think it is appropriate to tell a 100-person room of their peers the intimate details of their parents’ “loveless marriage” and the resulting emotional issues they now face.
I blame this overshare on the professor, who solicited it. The looks of disgust are hilarious…but this does not make it easy to focus on blogging.
Damn it class! You’re getting in the way of my writing time! Ugh. Luckily this disaster is ending for today, and I will keep with my blogging duties from now on…and provide more coherent “best week ever” posts…at least more coherent than this…possibly, maybe…
What a busy, hilarious week. There is too much to write about, so I am settling for pictures and captions. This is choppy, but appropriate given the state of things…
This week featured a massive iced-tea spill at the office. Amber is cackling as I run to fetch napkins:
That day I took the long route to work from Judd’s house just to see the Cathedral of Saint Paul:
I spent the rest of Saturday at work so today I held myself hostage on campus until I finished my homework. I have never done so much tax law reading in my life. I started my epic study-day at the purple onion cafe:
I was so thrilled that “homeless guy who reads aloud to himself” didn’t bother me this time! I was good about avoiding eye contact and glaring at my tax book…
I also decided that if I donate to the law school I will require that my donation be used to give the law school an entrance like this:
Swank! The other side of campus gets all of nice buildings…
I take the dogs on walks around the nice-side of campus all the time. And no, I haven’t been successful yet in getting Judd to take the Rottweiler:
…maybe I should throw in some fava beans and a nice chianti…
One of the places I visited on the nice-side of campus was the Walter Library. Behold:
Sigh. The undergrads have all the nice facilities… I have never taken a picture of the law school library because you’d scream.
One of my undergraduate bosses told me that I should have attended graduation because it would have given me a sense of closure. Today I realized he was right. My 1L year felt like a continuation of college in some ways, but today I looked at the undergrads and thought, “Who are these awkward, smelly people and how the hell was I ever one of them?”
After I almost hawked her to a classmate at the Lake of the Isles, Gertrude said “Oh, wait, this is supposed to be a run? I’ll give you a run fool!” And she wore me out. I think it was part ‘earning her keep’ and partially revenge for me trying to pass her off on someone else.
But seriously, does anyone want a Rottweiler or a bullmastiff? They are making me batty…
I come home from work on Saturday night to find my apartment covered in scat and blood.
Apparently stress caused the Rottweiler to have a bacterial imbalance, and erm, yeah. Blood. Everywhere. It was disgusting.
I was on the phone with Madre Jansen while scrubbing the blood from the floor:
Me: “Ugh.” Madre Jansen: “What’s wrong grasshopper?” Me: “I’m scrubbing blood from the floor. The Rottweiler is having issues again. I’m going to vet.” Madre Jansen: “This is getting expensive. Maybe you should give the dog back to the humane society.” Me: “Ugh. We’ll see. I still want to make her into a handbag.” Madre Jansen: “Maybe she’s on her period and – excuse my language – just a sloppy bitch.”
I laughed so hard that I almost dropped my phone in the blood.
Mom cursing = hilarity every time.
It was my third vet trip within a week. Harley did a good impression of my face when I saw the bill:
Afterwasting my entire salary atthe vet, Judd and I went to a birthday party for one of his lesbian friends. The party had about 10 girls, cake, beer, an old dog, and the obligatory cat.
Today is Judd’s birthday. We had brunch at Lush, which is one of my favorite bars despite the sperm lamps:
We couldn’t resist attacking Judd with silly string outside, and I stole his credit card to pay my vet bill:
Aside from work, the vet, and the birthdays, we also got some theater time in with the lovely Jay and Josh.
I know this is odd, but I fell in love with the Ordway’s lamps. Behold:
The play was four hours long but felt like a hilarious, extended Jerry Springer episode.
The last major thing that happened this week was that I quit my clerkship in Anoka.
Anoka is 40 miles away from my job in Eagan. I am working in Eagan full time during the summer and a daily 80-mile round-trip commute is unrealistic.
My time at the public defender’s was a worthwhile experience, but this is supposed to be “the semester that I get my shit together.”
“Getting things together” hasn’t happened yet because I spend Thursdays and Fridays running around the metro with my 80-mile commute, work all of Saturday, and by Sunday I am so exhausted that I can barely finish the reading for my compressed 3-day school week.
I did the overloaded-schedule-thing last semester. I need to spend this semester preparing for my career as a barista-bartender-novelist-fitness trainer, and I now have time to do that…after I finish my tax law reading of course.
Everyone has a syrupy facebook friend: the one whose status updates constantly mention their significant other in a cheesy, overly-sentimental way,
Syrupie Smith: “Off to lunch with my amazing boyfriend!”
Syrupton Bergsteiner: “Going to see my beau! Love you babe! Xoxo!”
Syrupy ~LOLZ~ Adams: “So excited for tonight! I get to see my sweety! Tee hee hee!”
Etc.
These are also the people with the preggers pictures and baby-profiles, or the gay guys who upload dozens of nearly-identical shots of themselves posing with their not-so-cute boyfriends. Hay!
We are as intense preteens and absolutely insufferable. We’ll blame it on spring, which came suddenly… these pictures were taken one week apart:
My Miami people will insist this is splitting hairs, but note the thaw! The grass is visible for the first time in months and some of it is already turning green.
Today the temperature was well into the 50′s and everyone was waltzed around without coats, and most of us had shorts on.
I had time for the multiple dog walks because I left work early.
My coworkers and I are probably going to start boycotting most of the food options at work. Amber got food poisoning from a cafeteria salmonella salad, and I became deathly ill after eating a pack of sugar-free gummi bears from the company store.
Although to be fair, the gummi bears did have a warning:
The jelly beans are even worse. The jelly bean package recommends that new eaters only eat “8 or less” beans lest they get explosive diarrhea.
I, of course, ate an entire pack of the jelly beans AND the gummi bears. And yes, the warnings are there for a reason. My goodness.
This coming week is Spring Break for my school. I will work a lot, but I have grand fitness plans. We’ll see if I can force myself into a Jillian Michaels workout routine, or if I will have Har Mar’s curves for another season.
I have not watched the Oscars since middle school. The show is excruciatingly boring, has no fun musical performances, and there are only 3 or 4 awards anyone cares about.
Although I suspected the Oscars would be a snoozefest, I joined the boyfriend at Jeff’s house to watch the Oscars anyway.
Nothing has changed. We are halfway through the Oscars and everyone is bored and bitchy. Vera Farmiga’s cupcake dress is almost as awful as the unflattering shots of Gabourey Sidibe. There is a random interpretive dance segment, and ample shots of the face-lifts in the audience.
The awards show was awful, but the real purpose of the evening was for me to meet thefreshly-minted-boyfriend‘s friends.
“Meeting the friends” is like playing minesweeper. If I give too many beauty pageant answers then the friends will think I’m boring, fake, or stupid. What I am left with is the countless ways to accidentally offend people.
One of the friends asks us how Macbeth was. We saw Macbeth on Friday, I was underwhelmed, so I say “skip it” before learning that the friend is the promoter for the theater.
Woops…. It was lovely, I swear… the pinnacle of theater…
Ugh.
Fail.
Aside from Oscars dullness and minesweeper fail, I blitzed through the rest of the week. I think I’m busy. My week felt like it was already over on Monday.
There is also Trivia on Tuesday evening with Carson:
Judd came to Trivia and we lost, but we didn’t really care.
I get up early on Wednesday to finish studying, show up for class, and then skip to work for the evening.
On Thursday and Friday mornings I’m in my car by 7:30am to observe bail hearings in Anoka.
Anoka is a town 26 miles north of my house. After the bail hearings and hanging around at the public defender’s office, I commute back down, let the dogs out, and then head 16 miles south to Eagan and work for the rest of the evening.
Friday night is usually date night with the boyfriend, and I work for the bulk of Saturday.
Then on Sunday I hope I’m not too exhausted to finish my tax reading for Monday morning…where the cycle continues again…
… this was supposed to be my light semester…but at least I’m not bored?
Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) posts are a summary of the previous week.
I may kill my dogs. Life would be so much easier, and I could rock a fierce Rottweiler murse.
But alas, that’s probably illegal. Wait, is it? I need to do some research…
The overarching theme of the past week has been my illness, which I blame on my dogs. What follows is the 5 step process of how my dogs blemished my week, and my face…and why I’m going to kill them for their fur:
Step 1: Harley gets sick.
I wake up because I sense my dog staring at me from the foot of my bed like a zombie in a horror movie. Then we have the following exchange:
Me: “Ugh. Sleep. I need it. What?” Harley: “Deal or no deal?” Me: “What?” Harley: “I got the shits. I can go right here on this rug, or you can get your ass up and take me out RIGHT NOW. Deal or no deal?” Me: “I hate you.”
Step 2: Exhaustion
Harley wakes me up every few hours to be let out. Gertrude, the Rottweiler, comes along. By the time I take them out, pick up the nast, and get them settled back down, I’ve lost a half hour.
So the next day in class, I’m as irritated and exhausted as my classmates with newborns at home. I’m unproductive, stressy, and everything takes way too much time to get done because I’m half-awake.
Step 3: I get sick
After a few days of being woken up by Harley’s emergencies, and getting stressed by my lack of productivity, I’m sick. Or rather, severely congested.
And it’s not a real sickness. This is one of those stupid, “your immune system is suppressed because of stress and lack of sleep and now you get to suffer” situations.
I feel like someone just stabbed me with a botox pen. But instead of getting a glossy face, I just have pathetic look of defeat and the need to blow my nose every few minutes. Fail.
Step 4: Harley is better, but now Gertrude is sick.
I get one full night of sleep and then the Rottweiler gets sick. I think she’s copying Harley for attention. Lack of sleep ensues due to more night time dog-diarrhea messitude…
Step 5: layer in class, court appearances, and dating
After high school no one ever believes you are sick. You can call in sick and cancel things, and people respect this out of some sense of professionalism…but no one really believes it.
It’s even worse when it’s not a dramatic illness but severe congestion. I was not contagious, but there was still an amazing amount of pain and sense that I was starring as the “before” person in an allergy commercial without the benefit of the Claritin Clearness afterwards.
So I got to be awkward congested guy in court, class, and on dates.
And just as the congestion subsides, I sprout a big, fat, juicy cold sore while at work on Saturday.
I’ve had cold sores since I was a little kid. I get cold sores after being sick, stressed, or exposed to citrus. They are gross and unsightly, but some people have real problems, and a 3-day blemish doesn’t count.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going strut into the clubhouse with a juicy sore on my lip. So Saturday night I stayed in, despite everyone wanting to hang out. Even my most antisocial friends were out on Saturday, but I wasn’t budging.
I coyly declined invitations, but for those who pressed on I had to engage in the overshare: “I HAVE A BIG FAT JUICY SORE ON MY LIP? YOU WANNA HANG? HMMMM? HMM? COOOTIES!!”
And surprise, surprise, that worked!
I’ve been rocking my $20 bottle of Abreva all day, but I think I’m still going to be pretty gross for tomorrow’s classes. I would just skip and heal at home, but again, my professors are not going to believe that I’m sick, and probably wouldn’t consider a disfigurement a good reason to miss class.
Note: Best Week Ever posts are a summary of the previous week(s).
My weeks are too unusual and packed to cover two weeks in a “best week ever” summary post, so here are five snippets of the chaos…
Scene 1: The getaway driver.
I am in court observing a bail hearing. A scraggly woman approaches the stand and the judge sentences her to four years in prison. She was the getaway driver for her godson’s bank robbing spree and could have been sentenced to 20 years. She thanks the judge for the 4-year sentence, and gets hauled to the next county for sentencing on another robbery.
It is hard to complain about much after volunteering at the public defender’s office. My time in court is always a nice reminder that some people have real problems.
Scene 2: dance-off at Lush.
1 a.m. on Saturday. A group of us are near the dance floor at Lush Bar in Northeast Minneapolis. Adam Lambert’s queeny little brother, Glambert, is on the floor. Glambert points dramatically, flips his hair, and challenges a sassy, break-dancing lesbian to a dance-off.
Hot messitude ensues.
Glambert flails around, points, and flips his hair like Jeffree Star without the tattoos, or personality. Glambert goes on for a long time until his friend grabs him and tells him to stop being ignorant.
That is when the sassy lesbian leaves her group of annoyed-looking butchgirls. Sassy slides onto the dance floor and launches into into a dramatic, stunt-filled break dance routine.
Glambert got served, but instead of clapping and going on with his life, Glambert proceeds to drop to the floor, open his legs…and… well, my friend Pechman described the scene the best: “That’s just embarrassing.”
Fail.
Scene 3: snot and authorities.
I was sick. It felt like someone filled my sinuses with bleach, but I was going to finish this moot court brief, headache and bleach be-damned.
I camped out at Wilde Roast and worked for close to five hours on revisions. Randy made a cameo and gave me a study break, but I eventually finished my brief and then raced to a copy shop for a blue brief cover.
I felt ridiculous paying for parking and trudging through the snow for a single colored copy of the cover of a pretend legal brief.
But whatever. If the Moot Rules of Appellate Procedure say blue cover, then they’ll get a blue cover. I’ve stop trying to make sense of my school’s requirements.
These past two weeks were full of trips to the Spyhouse, Starbucks, and Caffetto. I blame moot court and the tax code.
Scene 4: vogue!
I had a vogue battle with a Somali in St. Paul. Hilarity. That story is here.
Scene 5: the gumption.
The problem with dating in Minnesota is easily summed up: Pussyfooters.
Most guys simply drop equivocal hints that they want to go out on a date:
Pussyfooter: “I might want to get coffee. Someplace…somewhere…over the rainbow perhaps? You like coffee right? I like coffee…possibly, maybe…sometime…”
Pussyfooter: “I might be at this bar tonight. Possibly. Maybe. With friends. I’m not sure yet. Haven’t decided. Are you going out tonight? I might be…”
Pussyfooter: “I’m so bored. Thinking about doing something! Going out, maybe? Something. I mean, I may leave the house tonight… not having any plans or a life or anything makes this easy... So I might be up for something! With someone! Possibly! Maybe! What are you up to?”
They want me to ask them out. I have to make the plans because their fear of rejection limits them to pestering guys online.
And I refuse to go out with these guys beacuse I cannot be bothered to waste my time on self-conscious, timid guys. I’m not Dr. Phil, and don’t have the time to build a would-be suitor’s self esteem.
So how shocked was I when someone finally asked me out on a date? I had at least a dozen pussyfooters bothering me at the time, and this guy bowled them over and got the point.
He wasn’t quite my type based on his pictures, so of course he was attractive and interesting in person (seems to be a rule.) The date went well, and I am impressed.
I think Minnesota men might have redeemed themselves. Possibly, maybe.
