I was an orientation leader and spent the majority of my week convincing 1Ls that they can survive their first year of law school without being crazy. I also squeezed in some hours at the office, a movie, and even went to the Minnesota State Fair with Alesus.
It was my first time at the fair. I went primarily because the state fair is the only place I can buy Shoe MGK cleaner for my tacky white Aldo shoes. I also wanted to try camel on a stick.
Apparently the camel-sellers left the fair early, but I managed to buy the shoe cleaner, which was a life changing experience.
The Minnesota State Fair was surprisingly fun. It was like People of Wal-Mart minus the everyday low prices.
There were cows:
Crowds:
Fancy kiosks with enormous light bills:
“You got served” style dance-offs:
And so much more! And yes, I counted fanny packs.
KISS was the main act at the fair on the night we went, but Alesus and I skipped the KISS concert and took Darmor, a 1L, out on the town instead.
After the Eagle, we skipped to the the Gay 90’s, watched the drag show, and then went to the hip-hop room. The hip-hop room of the Gay 90′s is the best place for improvisational comedy in Minneapolis. That night there was a girl wearing a fully bejeweled gold tracksuit and another girl grinding with crutches. There was also a boy with a feathery, wing-like attachment on his plaid button-down shirt.
The people watching continued at Pizza Luce, which is always a hot mess, but at least the pizzeria bouncers didn’t frisk us this time.
On the walk back to the car we saw a full-out, six person brawl on Hennepin. There was screaming and fists flying everywhere. The horse cops had to break up the fighters. Stay classy, Minneapolis.
The next night Alesus and I went to Classafrazz at the Townhouse. We usually watch that drag show on Thursdays, but the Sunday show was just as entertaining.
I think the best act of the night was a Dolly Parton impersonation, although there was a good Beyonce and Liza Minnelli too.
The remainder of my labor day weekend was devoted to working, biking, cooking, and prepping for my last full semester of law school which starts tomorrow. Where did the time go?
I am sprawled on the bathroom floor. Blood is everywhere.
The “no mess” mouse trap that I bought is in fact, very messy. Sure, I cannot see the dead mouse in the trap’s chamber, but the trap is swimming in a pool of blood.
The trap is strategically placed under my bath tub, so I have to crawl on the floor to wipe up the pool of stinky mouse blood. Ick.
Cleaning was the theme of the week. My apartment got the complete pre-semester scrub. I changed the vase water, washed sheets and clothes, and shampooed the carpets.
I also scrubbed my kitchen, replaced tiles, and finally hauled in the tumblers that collected in my trunk during the semester:
Summer also ended on Friday with the start of orientation leader training. Being an orientation leader is a lot of work, but I had a great orientation leader who got my 1L year off to a great start, and I hope I can be as helpful to a fresh batch of students.
I am also thrilled that the law school decided to make my “classroom etiquette session” a formal part of orientation. Last year a few orientation leaders gave an informal etiquette pep talk to the section we were in charge of, and I think the administration noticed that our section had fewer social issues than the others.
The theory behind the etiquette session is that very few people are intentionally gunners/anti-social douchecanoes, and you can prevent much of the unnecessary 1L social awkwardness by just making the social rules that are common-sense to most of us clear to everyone.
A few examples are:
Interrupting other students or the professor during class.
Bragging in its various forms.
Monopolizing class time with obscure hypothetical questions.
Bringing inappropriate, obnoxious, or stinky food to class.
How to respectfully disagree during class discussion.
And much more! We’ll see if the advice takes.
The best part about orientation leader training so far is the mini-golf:
Six or seven different offices in the school set up mini-golf courses for us. We had to answer questions about the office to win points, and the points correlated to the amount of strokes we got. The mini-golf challenge was a great way to learn about the different offices, and made me realize how many offices exist in the school that students have no reason to go to.
We have one more day of training and orientation kicks off 8am on Tuesday, and it will pretty much suck up my entire week (8am-4pm)
…and I’m working 30 hours at the office, some time…this will be interesting.
I only have one week of summer left because orientation leader training starts this Friday and I will spend the entire first week of September encouraging the new 1Ls to be less awkward around each other. I think we call that mingling.
I know it’s the twilight of 2L summer, but my last week of summer is all about working, more lake time, dog time, and maybe even my first trip to the State Fair. And before you other law students get stabby, remember that I’ll be in your shoes in about a week. But for now, I’m still on vacation. Covet.
I’ll whip this blog into shape, and work on the DJing. Seriously. I might also wash some clothes, if only because all of my biking shorts are drenched…
School starts in a few weeks, and a lot of the soon-to-be 1Ls are announcing themselves. I’m not sure if I’m ready for the semester to start again. Summer is too much fun.
This week was embarrassingly busy. I didn’t even know what day it was during the beginning of the week.
The beginning of the week is a thick, sticky haze, but I think it had something to do with locking myself in my apartment to write my Physical Evidence paper.
The topic was Field Sobriety Tests. The thesis of the paper was that the tests aren’t scientific enough to form the basis of a DUI conviction. Luckily, the driver usually is usually caught with an open bottle in the car, falling over, or admits to being crunk-for-jesus. And the cops are usually smart enough to perform a somewhat more reliable chemical test (urine, blood, breath).
Of course, the evening after I finished my paper I got a bunch of cases on field sobriety tests. I wanted to scream. Actually, I might have. But it was 11:30pm and I was the only one in the building, so that’s okay.
Aside from the epic-paper, there were dog walks, awkward “middle of the day” apartment showings, and long, 10-hour stretches at work. I don’t really want to gloss over this week but I also don’t want to think about it.
The point is, I was very, very busy and sleep deprived. Not busy in the “I’m panicking and rushing around” sort of way, but busy with larger time commitments like 14-hour paper writing marathons, and 10-hour work days.
And then there was Molly Maids. (I can’t believe that I forgot to write1 a scathing post about Molly Maids!)
They rescheduled our 8am appointment to 9am, which was fine, but it was NOT fine was when 11am rolled around without any maids showing up.
The Molly Maid managers couldn’t reach the maids, no one knew what was going on, I was late…it was a mess.
After waiting for two hours I leave for my meeting at school. Of course, I am halfway to school when I get a call – “the maids are there but they don’t know where to park!”
I wanted to scream “WELL FIGURE IT OUT! IT’S CALLED STREET PARKING!” But it’s an hourly service and I didn’t want Maria and Yesina to overcharge me. So I politely told the manager that there was street parking in front of the building and that I would be back shortly.
The maids were already in the apartment when I came back.
I then left for work – way later than I hoped – and of course Molly Maids did not follow up to tell me if the job was done, or how long it took.
So I called them back, got transferred around, then someone left a message for someone else. Blasay bla…
I then called back a few hours later, and never received a follow up call. At all. Even days later. They haven’t charged me yet…so it’ll be a surprise when they do. Hmmf.
So I knew things were out of hand when Harley looked at me, hunched over, and spewed diarrhea all over my living room.
This was the week of shit. The dogs kept breaking into my 3-tiered plastic food shelf, gorging themselves, and then crapping everywhere.
I would come home to find a chocolate rendition of the Bavarian Alps in my living room, and the dogs passed out in the kitchen. The dogs also figured out how to open the toilet lid and drink the blue-water, so they had the runs most of the time.
The steamer and cleaning spray barely kept up. I spent most of my week flustered and disgusted. Ick.
So I was horrified when my landlord left me a voicemail: “I showed your apartment today. It’s trashed. I’m also showing it tomorrow. Can you clean it, you filthy slob of a man?”
I ran upstairs and cleaned my old apartment. It took about three hours. The old apartment looked absolutely crazy because all of my random trash and non-essential stuff was strewn about – dog hair, papers, old plant pots…
And of course the fridge had nothing left in it besides beer, condiments, and foul asparagus. The freezer had vodka and a turkey. My fridge in my new apartment looks like I robbed the farmer’s market: fruits, veggies, lactose-free milk, organic cold cuts, etc. But the remnants in my old fridge looked like Maury’s playing in the double-wide. Fail.
The bedroom had even more dog hair. Underbritches in the middle of the floor… What a lurid dig…
And to think that the landlord showed a prospective tenant that room! My landlord probably thinks I’m some sort dirty hillbilly prostitute and a complete caretaker fail. Ugh.
The apartment is clean now. My standing with the landlord? Eh. Probably irreparable. We’ll see if I get an eviction notice tomorrow. I really want to take him to my new apartment and prove that I’m not a slob, and that my apartment is actually cute and sanitary despite the occasional shit puddle…
Besides leaving a filthy apartment for unwary tenants and cleaning up dog shit, I spent the week fielding phone calls from crazies, changing my work schedule for apartment showings that never materialized, and finishing my Physical Evidence class.
The last class was pretty amazing because Cristina, (one of my classmates who is awesome) brought a sandwich bar for her presentation. Another student brought booze. I think booze should be a requirement for any student presentation over 10 minutes. It was glorious and put me in a good mood until about 20 minutes after class when I had to shovel shit from my living room.
Hopefully this coming week will involve less fecal matter.
Moving to my new apartment consumed the past two weeks. My move can be summed up with two quotes:
“Knowing what you got, knowing what you need, that’s inventory control.” – Frank Wheeler, Revolutionary Road.
“The more things I threw away, the more I found.” – Jack Gladney, White Noise.
After drilling fixtures into my new apartment, I confronted all of the crap that I accumulated over countless trips to Wal-Mart and Ikea. I have a lot of random packs of garbage bags, travel-sized tissues, and cords for things I chucked a long time ago.
So if you need a cord, tissue, or garbage bag, call me!
The Rottweiler has free reign over the apartment because I kennel Harley when I’m away. He figured out how to break into the plastic shelf that I keep the dog food in, so I came home one day to find food poured all over the kitchen and both dogs bloated and passed out.
Most of my new songs and videos will have to wait until I get real internet access.
The lack of home internet isn’t a bad thing. It makes blogging harder, but it also means that I waste less of my life watching Bethenny Getting Married, which is more than mildly addicting, FTW.
This week I officially became the caretaker for my apartment building. This means I have a set of master keys and get to explore all of the super-creepy storage areas in the basement.
Most of the rooms are straight out of a horror movie – spider webs, dust, filth, former tenants’ abandoned belongings…old dolls…
I only took that picture because I didn’t want to venture into that crawl space.
This week I’m moving into a new apartment in my building. It is a sublevel apartment that has more room for the dogs. Tomorrow I sign the lease and plan on installing metal security bars on the windows so Gertrude doesn’t eat any would-be intruders…
Apartment life picked up and my dating life finally calmed. Last month my dating life resembled a Bravo TV show: eight contestants, tacky shoes, weekly eliminations, product placement…
I then had a mass elimination, two surprise front runners, and then another arms-in-the-air elimination. Most of these guys fit neatly into my five categories, or just had very weak long-term potential. The judges don’t like that.
And don’t get me wrong…these contestants are perfectly nice. The main non-substance-abuse-related reason why these guys get the boot is their sheer timidness. I hate that.
I need a guy who is easy – and not in the “here, let me share my love-bumps” sort of way. I need a guy who is self-confident enough to be comfortable around me and doesn’t shoot me that meek “nerd asking Cindy Cheerleader to prom” look.
I am sure many people think that sort of vulnerability is cute, but to me it just screams: “Wilting flower! Change water daily to avoid mold.”
And because many of these guys read this blog, I have managed to develop a fifth category of suitor: Boca Boys.
Like their fake burger namesakes, these guys look like they have the substance of the real thing but taste funny and leave me wondering, “Where’s the beef?”
The Boca Boys are the shy, self-conscious guys who read my posts about how shy, self-conscious guys need not apply and decide to fake self-confidence in order to stay in the race.
The Boca Boy will constantly ask me to hang out and then give me the same wilting flower look that I hate getting. Boca Boys make me feel like I am on a date with Skee-Lo.
And like the soy-crap pretending to be a burger, these guys come with great packaging but leave me thoroughly underwhelmedevery time.
The twin cities parade was fun, but I expected more hot guys on floats…or at least one hot guy on a float…
I was however, extremely impressed with the Gay 90’s on Sunday evening. It felt like Miami on a weekend. The club was packed, the music was good and ghetto-tastic, and the usual trashy, unfit Minneapolis gogo-boys were replaced by model-like boys and girls who actually knew how to dance!
Fancy!
And the most fabulous character of the night was the trashed drag queen on stage hanging onto a stripper pole for balance. You know I had to get up and dance with her:
My favorite part of pride weekend is that I got to see so many of my friends, acquaintances, and my new random-facebook friends. At one point I knew every 5th person the street.
Thomp and I also saw Kathy Griffin perform and I was surprised by how many people I knew at the show.
Kathy Griffin was funny. I was not as impressed by the first hour of the show because the jokes centered around her show, which I don’t watch (no TV!) and US-Weekly humor. I don’t follow the Gosselins or care who Cameron Diaz is dating.
Kathy picked up steam during the second part of the show when she dished about Barbara Walters, The View, and meeting Michele Bachman in DC. The funniest part of the show involved this clip of LaToya Jackson and Bubbles the Chimp. I think Kathy exaggerated the story by adding that dung was flung, but it is still pretty funny.
Aside from the festivities, the vast majority of my time was spent at work or at home learning Ableton. I didn’t go to the lakes with the dogs or skate as much as I wanted because it rained almost every day during the past few weeks:
I think we got hail a few times and tornadoes made guest appearances in other parts of Minnesota.
The weather is stabilizing and hopefully the krakens and I can get out more this week. I am also working on my first album. There will be 10 songs. Expect rapping, reggaeton, house music, guest appearances, and complete randomness.
