I love being lazy

I am so loving the doing nothing right now (including substantive blogging apparently). I know it won't happen again for quite some time, and even now there are a few things I need to do before school starts up again. Bit for today and probably tomorrow, this is bliss.

Clever Play

I'm still no great football fan, but I do appreciate clever. 

Found via socioimages, complete with fancy commentary.

Moving back towards normal

We unpacked today! Complete with laundry even. I'm far too proud of myself for accomplishing something so simple. Perhaps tomorrow we'll even make it to a grocery store. Although, personally I'm somewhat curious how long we could make it on the increasingly random and sad assortment of food in our fridge.

Home Again

Technically I've been home again since Saturday (why yes, I did spend Christmas on a plane), but I've just now begun to feel human again. Seriously, I feel like I've done nothing but sleep since I got back. And I'm still tired. Also, oddly jet-lagged. It feels so counter-intuitive to be trying to make myself stay up late, when I spend most of my life trying to get to force myself to get to bed at a decent hour. But this falling into bed exhausted at 9pm and waking up bright eyed at 5am just isn't working for me.

Weird sleep aside,it was still a fantastic trip. I think I'll be going back and doing some fast post-dated posts so I can pretend that I'm still keeping my blog every day for a year goal, and then maybe share a few stories if I can think of anything. But you know, tomorrow, because it's about 10pm now and I can barely keep my eyes open.

Dublin, Full Day 1

Still having fun. And now the internet knows my pre-hyphenated last name.

Made It! (And a special thankyou to Frankfurt Airport's magical hallway of requirment)

Well, it looks like we made it safe and sound to Dublin. It was actually a pretty decent flight (well, 3 to be exact - DC to Boston to Frankfurt to Dublin). And, considering I went through security a grand total of 5 times (once at each airport, because our transferring airports were laid out weird, and an extra 2 times at Reagan because we were early, lines were short, and I wanted to grab a sandwich from one of the food places in a different terminal. It was worth taking my shoes off twice.) without incident, scans or grops (well for me, Zach, who never took any extra sandwich trips, got both scanned and groped, because he's just lucky. Or because beards are scary.).

But the best part of the whole flight, was getting off the plane in Frankfurt at 5am, with a 5 hour layover ahead of us, and not having slept a wink on the flight over, and finding row after row after row of cots. I almost cried when I realized I might actually get to sleep. Real sleep, not awkward curled up in a horrible chair trying to ignore a never ending stream of useless announcements faux-sleep. Oh, there were minimal announcements too. Ir was all very magical.

Anyways, we're now in Dublin. I'm sure it will be great enough to bump unexpected cots off of being my favorite part of the trip, but I assure you it will be a tough competition.

Penguin Ornaments

A few days before we left, we finally set up our somewhat sad little fake tree with our strand of lights and 6 ornaments. We won't see it much this Christmas, but I know that I'll be really happy to walk in when this trip is over and see it all happy and Christmasey.

Especially my personal favorites of the ornaments, the penguins that I liberated from my Mom's tree one Christmas after learning that my baby 1st Christmas ornament was MIA.

(Why yes, this is a filler post. Expect more of them, because I'm in Europe, enjoying awesomeness, and didn't plan well enough to pre-write stuff but am too stubborn to let go of my blogging every day for a year goal)

Leaving for the airport in about 11 hours. Now, I just need to pack, clean the apartment and put the last touches on my mediocre paper. Time management is so not my specialty.

On the plus side, sleeping on the plane shouldn't pose a problem. 

Christmas Music

Growing up we only had one Christmas album, well actually a cassette tape that I'm surprised we didn't break as it was on nearly constantly for the month of December and the random week in July where every year I would decide I really missed Christmas.

And that's why even though I like quite a few different Christmas albums and songs, The Carpenters Christmas Portrait album will always be the only thing that really feels like Christmas to me.

For the life of me I don't know why my parents had the Carpenters and not something more traditional like Bing Crosby. They didn't listen to anything remotely like the Carpenters the rest of the year, they generally leaned more towards Queen and Genesis. Maybe it was because my Dad will always say that Karen Carpenter kind of sounds like my Mom, or maybe the tape was just on sale. For what ever reason, every December I spend some quality time with the Carpenters. 

Aloha, really, really wins.

Hey, remember my former High School's football team, who had always sucked when I went there, but was doing surprisingly well, so much that non-sports fan me actually cared? They just won the state Championship, 34-13, having never even been in the semi-finals before.

So, congratulations Aloha Warriors! I was over hear on the East Coast, obsessively checking the live play feed the whole time. Even with just little text updates, I was excited and anxious and all kinds of other sports fan feelings the whole time. Quite the new sensation. Maybe the reason I never cared about sports before is because all the teams I was supposed to care about sucked.

Also, the other team I kind of care about, the UofO Ducks are going the the BCS Championship. This is apparently a good football year for me. And whatdayaknow, I actually have genuine care and excitement. Yay rah!

You all are fantastic

You all are seriously amazing. I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that I can sit down, write about a problem, and the next day have all kinds of fantastic advice and encouragement from people I know, but haven't ever met. The internet is fantastic. You're fantastic. Thanks. Now, I'm going to go and actually use all that wonderful advice and figure out how to call my bank.

Travel Freak Out

I leave for my amazing Europe trip in 5 days. I'm totally freaking out. Excited, oh absolutely. But still freaking out. I've never done any travel remotely like this. Not only have I specifically never been to either Dublin or London, but I've pretty much never traveled. Never been to a foreign country. Never been on an overseas flight. So, as I try to make sure everything is ready and will go perfectly, I find myself freaking out a bit. I just feel like I'm going to forget something, or do something wrong and get everything going on the wrong foot. I like to prepare and plan and feel secure and in control. I like the known. This trip is fantastic, but not known. Hence the worry. (Oh, and all the TSA news stories are not helping. Reading a thread on people's worst travel stories may also have been counter-productive.)

Worry #1 - The Getting Ready
Finishing up my 30pg paper on time aside, what should I be packing for 10 days in Ireland and the UK in December? Warm clothes and layers, sure, but what about all the other little things that make traveling so much easier? Should I try to get some foreign currency before hand?

Worry #2 - The Getting There
How does international travel even work? I have my lovely passport, but do I have to do anything else special beyond just showing up?

What about surviving on the plane? How do you not go crazy on 10 hour flights? How do you sleep? How do you stay occupied? Books are great, but which one? Should I bring food?

Worry #3 - The Being There
This, I'm not so worried about. Once we're there, we're there and that fact alone will make everything fantastic, even if I do something stupid like forget to pack socks.  Still, any London/Dublin must sees or other general recommendations are always welcome. Mostly, I should just remember to focus on this part and stress a little less about being perfectly ready for it.

Not beautiful, just different

#reverb10 - December 8 – Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. 

What makes me different? Mostly, I'm just plain odd and a little over-imaginative and colorful. At least, that's what people keep telling me, while I sit there trying to figure out why exactly that was so weird. As in, we'll be playing a game of pictionary, where most people write things like Glee or penguins - and my contribution will be mermaid cannibals. Or I'll speak up in class, but with apparently a little more movement in my voice and arms than a more dignified law student, and a metaphor that is somehow just a little more colorful than ordinary. Or perhaps it was as simple as the fact that me stating that I think a certain professor is brilliant, but allowing him to interact with actual human beings seems like a gross violation of human rights, is just a tad more blunt than normal.

Honestly, most of this stuff just makes me feel self-conscious. I don't do things because I intentionally want to be odd, I just do things because that's what feels normal to me. Only to afterwords have people come up and tell me how funny or entertaining I was, meaning not normal. In a good way of course. I accept the compliment, I like the recognition, but I'm also usually inwardly trying to understand why what I did was so unusual.

These are the things people tell me they like about me. But they don't make me feel beautiful, mostly just flumoxed and a little self-conscious. I never know when I open my mouth if what I say will be taken like a normal, rational person statement, or if it will be met with an amused "Oh, that Genavee." Of course, sometimes it is all intentional, or at least it ends up that way when I start hamming it up when I'm getting a good reaction. But sometimes I really do wish I could just turn off the different, or at the very least always recognize it as such.

Sick Diet

What do you eat when your sick?

Right on schedule, I've developed my traditional achy cold and sore throat for finals. It's not pretty. The first night it really kicked in, I realized we were out of medicine, so I would lay there and try to sleep until it would hurt so bad that I'd have to get up and try some home remedy (gargling w/ salt water, honey, etc). Which would kind of work, but also wake me up again, leaving me to lay and get sleepy just in time for the pain to kick again. Fun stuff. With medicine, I can now sleep again. Unfortunately, my voice now sounds kind of like  Christian Bale's batman. While saying ordinary things is somewhat more fun, it's still probably not the best state of things so I'm trying to get rid of this as soon as possible. 

Generally when I'm sick I go for teh comfort food route, but partially because I'm not willing to take the time to cook, and partially because I want this gone now, I'm trying something else out. My theory is that if i load my body up with as much Vitamin C as humanly possible, at some point it will reach critical mass and explode, taking all traces of sickness with it. This kind of thinking is why I'm in law school, not medical. So far I'm living largely on pomegranate seeds, orange juice and vitamin c capsules. By my calculations, I'm consuming 2000% the daily recommended approach.

Surprisingly, I think it's actually kind of working. That or my body is just naturally healing, but the point is that batman voice aside, I feel pretty good. Today, I even decided I should probably add some protein in the mix, so I've added occasional nibbles of the crumbled bacon bits I usually put into salads. It's kind of like being on a Vitamin C version of Atkins. Anyways, I should probably go study or sleep or drink some more juice, so I think I'll just go do that instead of trying to find a neat way of concluding that. Here's hoping I'm not slowly killing myself with Vitamin C and goodnight.

The Tale of the Whale

Home Improvement projects are not my forte. Both in skill required and being too lazy to overcome my natural inclination towards sloth.

First up, the laziness. I've had an empty $2 frame from IKEA hanging out in my apartments designated black hole, in this case an arm chair stuffed under my desk, for over a year. I've been meaning to put something in and hang in the bathroom, in the hopes that it would make it a little less creepy. I've even had an image saved that I keep meaning to print out and put in the frame which will then be hung in the bathroom for about that long. It's very etsy chic, with a whale assuring me that everything is okay. Andy by etsy chic, I mean its a print being sold on etsy that I somewhat unethically saved a copy of and mean to duplicate using my color printer. I know, I'm not a good person. I also watch pirated tv. Moving on.

Well after a year of meaning to do it latter, latter finally came and I finally decided that there was no reason why I couldn't hit print, take the printed paper, put it in a frame and get that frame onto a wall. Ha. Remember the no skill part?

Putting the paper in the frame was easy enough. Hanging it? Not so much. The frame came with this really long wire and two hooks. I turned that frame around every witch way, trying to find where to put the hooks to attach the wire too before concluding that there were no obvious or unobvious holes to screw the hooks into. So, I improvised and just kind of stuffed the wire into the frame back, popped it on and hoped for the best.

I wasn't sure how long the wire would hold, but I assumed it would probably at least be ok for a few days. If not, hey that's future Genavee's problem. Who cares about her? So, I grabbed our hammer and a few nails left over from assembling various pieces of IKEA furniture and headed in to get this thing hung.

Figuring that anything that is going to be seen primarily by naked people coming in and out of a shower who presumably had better things on their mind than picture placement, I just kind of looked at the wall, choose a spot, held the nail and hit it with the hammer. To my surprise it actually went into the wall fairly easily for a little while. About half way through it had apparently had enough with being cooperative and just felt like hanging out no matter how hard I walloped it. It was fairly clear after a few strokes that the nail was going to win, so I decided to give hanging the picture a try. Unsurprisingly, with the nail poking out so far, the picture stuck out at a very odd and obvious angle. And then fell down.

But I'm a creative girl, and I could solve that problem. If the nail wouldn't go in any farther, I'd just beat the nail until it bent to a more agreeable angle. And so I did. And then I hung the picture again. It looked ok, until I let go, and it swung around for a whil until it settled into an awkward position where it was not only crooked, but also had a corner awkwardly and stubbornly swung away from the wall.

 I fought with that thing for minutes, trying everything I could to get it straight. I readjusted the wire, hit the nail some more, placed it softly, tried making it stick with some scotch tape, everything. No matter what I did, the whale was always crooked and mocking me with it's optimism. I finally had enough and shouted as I stormed out":


"Everything is NOT ok, you're crooked, you stupid WHALE."

 And then Zach came home, tried very hard to not laugh at my irateness over the whale, figured out that the screws screw directly into the wood, and generally fixed everything. So now our bathroom has a reassuring rather that mocking whale.

One corner still sticks out kind of funny, but in a very subtle, okay kind of way. Hey, the whale just said things would be okay, not perfect. 

The law of the bikes

I was job hunting/exploring online today (read: I googled various variations of "Oregon" "Law" "Job" etc). Did you know that there are firms that specialize in bike law? The law of bicycles? Possibly even unicycles? There are people who spend there days on bicycle related legal matters? For a living? (I've probably over-made my point. But bike law?)

I now want to specialize in something that is certainly legitimate, but just doesn't quite feel that way. Cupcake law, for example. Manatee law. Ironic mustache tattoo and other hipster paraphernalia law (Oh, I could make a killing in Oregon). Of course, I'm open to suggestions.

The Not so Sane Rally

My question; Is it worth going to something solely for the purpose of being able to say "I was there"? Because that's where I am with the rally to restore sanity, and will probably will be with many other events.

In theory, it was a really cool event. An enormous crowd, mostly full of people that don't go to those types of things, fun and intelligent speakers, amusing signs, historic, etc. And I suppose all of that was technically still true, but to me it pretty much felt like being squeezed like a sardine amidst a horde of people, and being physically propelled from one side of the mall to the other by the sheer force of people movement and a strong desire to not be trampled.

I wasn't really expecting anything all that huge. Silly of me, I know. My first clue that I was very, very wrong was when we went to the bus stop Saturday morning. The bus, only about 1/3 of the way through its route was already packed to the gills. We ended up taking another bus to a metro station across town, having two trains come by that could not fit in another human being, and trust me people tried, taking a train the other direction to try to get a jump on things and finally barely squeezing in. All in all, it took almost two hours to make a trip that should have taken half an hour. I've never seen crowds like that on the metro, and it was even crazier once we got above ground. We managed to get in around 7th street, but we could never find a constant place to just stand, people kept moving in an exercise of futility. We couldn't see a thing, and could only make out a few words of what was said. Did I mention the crazy? I'm talking people climbing up and falling of off trees, lightposts and pretty much anything that could possibly be scaled. It wasn't just on the mall, the crowds extended out for a few blocks. Needless to say, getting home was also an adventure, only with the added bonus of our good will and patience having been spent.

Also, my cell phone is gone. It seems melodramatic to say that it was pickpocketed...but everything else was still in my purse, including little things that would have been much more likely to fall out, I never set my bag down, or meant over in a way thing could have fallen out, I've called all the businesses I was in that day, and well it's gone. So that kind of sours my experience a bit. I hate spending money on things that should just be.

Don't get me wrong, people were fairly polite for how crowded it was, there was a cool atmosphere and some fun signs. But, uh, the point is that while I can say I went to the rally, my experience was pretty much just being pushed and pulled and stuffed into small spaces with a crowd of decent people and their amusing signs and losing my phone. Ordinarily not a recipe for a good time. I'm not convinced that calling it something cool and historic really takes away from the fact that objectively it was kind of miserable. 

But, I can say I was there.

Towards the beginning of the rally, when we were still relatively optimistic. Also the only picture that isn't just the tops of heads of random people, because that's pretty much all we saw.

Ok, I lied. There's also a picture of Obama loving Jesus on a street light.

And a Viking party boat. I don't understand either.

POOF November

When I was a kid, I somewhat secretly believed that I had special powers. You know, ESP*, ability to bend the universe to my will, the usual. I pretty much just used my powers to stare at traffic lights and make them turn green. Sure, it was bound to happen eventually, but you can't prove that I didn't make it happen sooner.

Sometimes I really wish I still had that kind of faith in my control the universe power (It's only real if you believe!). Because then I would squint my eyes up all tight and make November go POOF! Because I am so not ready for this month. So much to do! Just like every November since I've been a student! And still get surprised by every year! POOF November, I said POOF!



*I sort of think I still have some kind of predict the future ability. As in, I usually feel like I can predict major events in the lives of friends, like pregnancy or getting engaged before they're officially announced. Now, I also think things will happen that never do. And it's entirely possible that I'm right through a combination of the twice a day stopped clock principle, and the ability to pick up on somewhat subtle clues. But that's not nearly as cool.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Especially to all the lazy/not so social people who aren't out doing anything fun and costume/candy related. Over here we've been having a Buffy marathon and tomorrow it's all about the discount candy. It's been awesome/ok.

Sanity

Still really, really excited for the Rally to Restore Sanity. (Just a few more hours).

But, until then, here's a little reminder that as bad and nasty as things are now, they're not nearly as crazy, horrible and entertaining as they once were.

Fried (somewhat literally)

No blog post today because I am straight up loony toons right now. As in, I apparently forget things that happened just minutes ago. Ex. Zach came back inside - I looked at him and asked where did you go? He looked at me like I was crazy and said that he just took the trash out, like I had asked him to. No idea what he's talking about. I'm going to consider this a good night if at some point I can walk around, without falling over! Ah epilespsy, nothing like internal lighting frying my brain for a good time.

So yah, I'm going to rest up, because I'm rallying at the Mall tomorrow!  Very exciting.

True Ghost Stories

I may be a wuss about scary movies, but I'm a sucker for real life ghost stories. As in, I know that rationally there are probably perfectly logical explanations for flickering lights, odd noises, moving objects, etc. But, somehow the idea of honest to goodness ghosts or energies or whatever just somehow makes sense to me.  I don't know, but you know how sometimes you go to a historical site, or even just someplace that seems ordinary, and from the moment you walk in, it just feels a certain way for no good reason? You feel more comfortable and familiar than you have any right to be, or you just want out as soon as possible even though nothing is wrong. It's probably nothing, or just a subconscious something or other. Still, some places just seem to have a certain energy that sticks around them, and the idea that big events or big people leave something there doesn't seem to outlandish. Or maybe (probably) this is just another of my bits of crazy.

Either way, especially around Halloween, I like to curl up and read random collections of supposedly real encounters with unexplained things. Just for a little bit it's nice to not be skeptical and just believe in what if for a while.
 
Of course, I've never actually experienced anything  much, which is probably for the best. I do occasionally chat with and say thank you to Dennis, our elevator ghost that I 20% believe in (that elevator spontaneously opens up for me way too often, especially if I'm carrying something heavy, or have had a bad day). I'll probably keep up friendly conversation at any sign of possible other occupants of places I may live, because hey worst case scenario I'm just talking to myself, best case I'm being a good roommate. (Assuming they're decent people of course. I'm not living with anyone malicious, I don't care how dead they are).

This is about the closest I come to actually having anything extraworldly touch my life. 

I grew up in a house that was built in the early 1900's. We really don't know how old it was, but apparently it was built with square nails, so we presume it was pretty dang old. As a kid whose knowledge of history almsot exclusively consisted of Pioneers, because that what a combination of growing up both as a Mormon and in Oregon does to a kid, I just assumed that my house was lived in by pioneers. It was a cool, if kind of run-down house. It also had a gigantic basement. To get into it, you crawled into this little half door at the base of the stairs between the porch and the kitchen. Down you went into a maze of boxes and half walls, the light coming from a few exposed bulbs that were always swinging and what little came in from the constantly smudged and bubble windows. In the very back of the basement, behind the water heater and right next to the exposed heating pipes that always groaned a little was a little room that could shut off from everything. There was no way in heaven or earth I was ever going to set foot in there.

I especially wasn't going to go in after my Dad told me what had happened to the little girl whose family first built the house. Back then this was just a house on the outskirts of town. The family was full of kids, and always busy. So when it was time for them to make their big trip into Portland, everyone was excited, everything was frantic. And everyone missed the little girl, trying to find her doll. After looking everywhere else, she was looked in that back basement room. Which is where she was when the family left, never missing her amidst all the hussle and bussle. And where she stayed, locked up tight, no one around. Where she started to cry when the rain came, leaking in through the window, but trapped inside with her behind the heavy door that she could not move no matter how she tried. That's where they found her when they came back, and that's where her spirit stays to this day, still crying for someone to find her every time it rains.

Of course, none of that was true. Not even remotely. But after my Dad told me that story, every time it rained there wasn't a chance on earth that I was going to set foot anywhere near that room. Even now if I were to go back, there's no way I would set foot in that back basement room. Especially if it was raining.

Kapoww

Law school hammered me upside the head all day today. Wow. At this point I half expect a knock on the door, "hello, who is it?", oh, it's law school, followed me home to punch me in the face.

In other words, I take back everything I said yesterday about liking the drama of law. 

Voyurism

• I just found out that as a law student I have access to all sorts of crazy databases with very personal information. Of course, they're so poorly designed that all I can figure out how to do is look at property sales and assessments. Which got boring pretty fast. But still. 
• If I ever learn a skill that could be used for devious purposes, I always try to think of ridiculous hypothetical situations where I could use that as part of my master plan.
• I especially do that when I've been watching Gossip Girl. 
• I have kind of a voyeristic personality. Not gossipy, I don't care about sharing info, I just love to know all the juicy details. Hence why I read blogs.
• I'm slightly concerned that my interest in Family law may be more motivated by that than by a better desire to be good and helpful to people. Already my favorite law school readings are the cases where the facts are just soap opera insane. I wonder if I could use that as the tag line for my future firm. MylastName esq. - for all your soap opera crazy legal needs.
• Using these bullet points is so lazy. I could easily take all that and turn it into a nice, flowing coherent post. I just don't feel like it tonight.

Scary Movies

I cannot handle scary movies. At all. I saw one of the Halloween sequels once, and I still taking a running leap into bed to avoid being grabbed by the evil person underneath. Nevermind that with all the boxes under our bed, no one could possibly be hidding. If I bend down to wash my face, I have to open my eyes very slowly when I stand up again, so that I won't be surprised by someone appearing in the mirror behind me. Don't even get me started about TV static - and I kept my eyes shut for the last 20 minutes of that movie. In short, I have a very overactive imagination, and a loose grip on reality when it comes to fictionally induced fear.

So, being the smart woman I like to think I am, I no longer watch horror movies. But, being the sometimes stupid woman I actually am, sometimes I read the plot summaries for current movies on Wikipedia, especially if I've seen one too many ads and I'm just curious about what happens. How bad can a few paragraphs of bad bones text, no scary music, no sudden jumps, none of all that extra stuff, just the basic ins and outs of plot be?

Um, pretty bad. If I fall asleep in class tommorow, I'm blaming you Paranormal Activity franchise. To everyone who manages to actually watch full horror movies and go about their lives normally - I don't understand you.

Bedding

We currently have a beige, fuzzy blanket as our bed cover thing. It is very comfortable, and very boring. So, when I came across this thread over at Jezebel full of gorgeous bedding, the desire for something with a little more, well anything, hit me hard.

Of course, dropping a few hundred dollars on bedding just isn't going to happen anytime soon. So after browsing at the beautiful, but expensive sites, I wandered over to Target, where I found this:

Oh my. I don't normally go for something so girly, pink and floral. But I think it's so bold that it doesn't feel frilly, just warm and lovely. It's more mod than little girl. And ok, I do love purple. I also love $20 quilts. Hello.

Of course, I also love Zach. Whose response was that it was very pretty, and yes he could see why I like it. But, while he could live with a girlie pattern or a girlie color, both was just too much. Which is reasonable, and expected. I'd really like to complain about how sometimes it would be nice to just do whatever I want, decorate however I want, blah blah. Except that 95% of the time, that ends up being true. Still, pretty.

Anyways, as part of my it's not that crazy girly, I made a polyvore. I'm not thrilled with it, it still needs somethings to help balance it out. But I do so love the bold colors.

Bedroom2 by GenaveeC on Polyvore.com

Three and a Half Seconds About Life

Odds are most people already saw this at Dooce, but I find it absurdly funny, and it's Saturday and I don't feel like blogging.


 

Stress Preferences

Would you rather have a packed week and a relaxing weekend, or have everything a little more evenly spread out?

Personally, I'm in the packed week, slow weekend category. Having a constant level of stress and business, even if it's all reasonably moderate just wears me out. When I'm relaxing, I like to know that I can sink into it for a while without anything hanging over my head. I can deal with crazy amount of stress, so long as I know when it will end.

In other words, even though I had a decent week work load wise, I'm still a little put out by the necessity of going back up to campus on my weekend. 

Dressing the Zach

Labor day sales were really fun for me. Not because of anything amazing I grabbed for myself (not that that didn't happen) but for one of the first times in our marriage I got to dabble in doll fantasies with Zach.

See, most days Zach wears jeans and a button down, white shirt. The same button down, white shirts he wore on his LDS mission. Which he went on when he was 19. He's 27 now. The shirts have lasted amazingly well, so there hasn't been any need in his mind to replace them. I beg to differ. Don't get me wrong, white button down shirt and jeans is a decent look. Or it can be. But everyday, with baggy old shirts and sad Dad jeans, just isn't ideal.

We eased in nice and slow. His white shirts that I suspect he will still be wearing ten years from now all hailed from Land's End. So when I saw the magic sale words at their hipper Land's End Canvas, I jumped. It took several hours looking at every possible thing, discussing what colors and patterns were too bold (him) or to blah (me), whether a medium was too loose (me) or too tight (him). And finally ended up just deciding that they had  a great return policy, so lets just try it all. And so we did. He was right about Gingham looking idiotic on him, but I was too busy thinking how great he looked in some fitted shirts with great stripes to care.

So, his wardrobe is now white shirts, and about 5 stripped shirts in various colors that fit just right. I'm thrilled. Really, really thrilled. I know it's good to not be superficial, but I kind of am to some extent, and my oh my did he look good to me.


Now if I can just convince him that just because his light wash Costco Dad jeans are indestructible is no reason to not get at least one dark wash pair with a little fit. Maybe for Black Friday.

Not Actual Legal Advice

I'll say it again - this is not actual legal advice.

But. You know how sometimes you want to just pull an ostrich and ignore something in the hopes that it will go away? And how that usually just results in you being eaten by a metaphoric lion?

Apparently that is actually a sound legal strategy! No joke. Filling lawsuits is annoying. And with a little perseverance and filling know how, you can probably annoy the other side into just giving up. Even if you lose the actual case, they have to go through even more annoying stuff to get the court to make you pay or do whatever it is your supposed to. Sure, if they ever do manage to slog through it all, or have a rotating supply of fresh student attorneys to do it for the client or otherwise can manage to do something to make the court make you do something, you may end up in a less than good situation. But all in all, ignoring it is a wonderful defense strategy.

And that's one of the things I've learned from clinic (well, that I can blog about with breaking various ethics rules. Sometimes when I'm bored/nerdy I play a game where I imagine something I'd like to do or say, and the try to figure out how many ethical rules I'm breaking. It's always a little disturbing when I come up with something particularly gnarly and then realize that it is apparently perfectly ethical. Ah law.)

Aloha Wins! (and my football heart grows three sizes)

I wrote previously about how I don't really get football and team spirit and blah blah blah.

I still don't get it. But I do apparently care. You see, over the weekend Aloha High beat Jesuit, 38-25. Which means absolutely nothing to almost everyone reading.

Aloha High School, home of the Hawaiian themed warriors even though Aloha Oregon has nothing to do with Hawaii, is where I attended High School. It's a decent school, some good teachers, good people, etc. But it is not known for good sport programs in general, and Football in particular. In my four years of High School, I'm pretty sure the football team only won one game. And that was a pre-season game, so it doesn't count. It was a truth universally acknowledged that the football team sucked. We still had the requisite pep rallies and half-hearted cheers, when the team was lucky. When the team wasn't so lucky, they would get what felt like the entire school shouting the opposing teams name after being asked "Whose going to win this game!" in a futile attempt to get us riled up by our endlessly optimistic Principal. We were a more realistic bunch.

And then there was Jesuit. Jesuit wasn't just a big, fancy private high school. They were also a sports powerhouse, to the point of almost being comical. Watching them face off against Aloha was like looking at   an inspirational sports movie with the loveable losers and the well-funded, lean, mean bad guys. Only crossed with a ritualistic slaughter. It wasn't just that the won everything, all the time, they were kind of jerks about winning. Oh, and they also lied about obviously recruiting. No one ever seemed to stand a chance, because any decent player was always swooped up by the machine.

They beat Aloha for 25 straight years. Not they we were special, we may have lost the worst, but they usually dominated everybody. Every now and again another school would somehow manage to steal away the district title, but they had still managed to keep the thing for six straight years.

And then on Friday, before probably a crowd of 5,000 (I seem to recall games being lucky to get a few hundred, and most of them were there for the marching band) Aloha beat Jesuit. By a lot. I didn't even know the game was happening, didn't think I would care even if I'd known. But when I heard the news, I was smiling and fist pumping without really knowing what I was doing.

I'm still inexplicably happy about this. This has nothing to do with me. I obviously wasn't playing the game or even in attendance. I graduated six years ago. Even when I was a student I took pride in not caring. But even though logically a big win by some teens who play at my former high school doesn't have anything to do with me, it sure feels like it does.

Autumn means

To me, autumn means delicious, carby, pumpkin muffins.

To Zach, it means a constant stream of relatively healthy homemade cranberry sauce.

This is why he is going to outlive me. Even his desserts are pretty much just fruit. Considering I'm jealous and selfish enough that he can't remarry unless my ghost says it's ok (I have the same request from him, but he rarely says no now, so I bet I can talk his ghost into if it comes down to it) I keep trying to get him to eat more like me so we can die closer together and don't have to deal with that whole mess.  But the man just prefers healthy foods. Freak. Loveable freak, but still.

A ____ kind of weekend

This hasn't been a blogging weekend. It's been a going to training seminars, finally getting rid of the ring on the bathtube, get papers started, take the pile of returns that has been clogging the apartment out to the post office, fill out passport application, take a long nap, relax with homemade pizza, a Katherine Hepburn movie (everyone has a favorite old movie star, and she's mine) and Zach kind of a weekend. See you tomorrow.

Superhero cake

Today, I made toast. Burned toast. I fail.

Bacon Pancakes

I have an  (unfairly earned, in my opinion) reputation in my family of having an excessive love of bacon. I contest that claim on 2 grounds. 1. Bacon is awesome. How can you love a good thing too much? 2. I don't really love bacon all that much. I just think many things taste better with it. And why wouldn't I want my food to taste good? This is not the same as wanting a bacon T-shirt, bacon bandaids or bacon packing tape. Yes, I've received all of those, and no, they didn't really get used.

 But back to bacon making things taste better. I'm a little shocked I never thought of it before, but bacon pancakes just seem like such an obvious bit of breakfast perfection.

Baby brides

You know you're probably too young to get married, if you still have braces.

Somewhat related, I've found that browsing through the wedding albums of strangers who happen to have friends in common with me is the perfect mix of "oh how sweet and pretty" and helping me to get out my weekly quota of judging in a quick, fun and easy manner.

Looking, Feeling and Being Awesome today

I know these pictures are horrible (only corner of the apartment that isn't super shakey, bad light, blurry due to bad light, etc). But my oh my, did I look and feel awesome today. And what's the point of a blog if I can't use it to share my awesomness with the whole internet?

My oh my, I am really having fun getting a little more dressed up and loving bright and bold colors. Also awesome is spending an hour trying to find a solution to a client problem, and in one phone call finding out that the problem just magically resolved itself. Personally, I think the awesome outfit might just have general powers of awesomeness. For a day that began with a bowl of cereal filled with spoiled milk (this was before the outfit made it's appearance, apparently yoga pants only have powers of comfyness), I'm really happy right now.

Breast Cancer Awareness

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Even though much "awareness" seems to center around randomly making things pink, awkward jokes about saving the ta-tas and vaguely dirty facebook memes that don't have any logical connection to anything productive, overall awareness does good things. Like reminding people to do self-exams to check for lumps.

I first heard about the importance of doing monthly self-exams a few years ago. One of my favorite aunts had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer (she's fine now), so for once I actually decided to give it a try.

For as much as I appreciate all the aesthetic awesomeness of my breast, my attention had mostly been focused on choosing tops that made them looks fantastic but not overly skanky. Not so much with the getting personal and touchy feely. So it felt a little odd to be feeling myself up in the shower. It felt even worse when I realized that I had a huge lump right in the middle of each breast.

I was sure that meant I was going to die. I couldn't believe that I had waited so long to check, and now it was certainly too late. Fortunately, somewhere in the midst of my hypochondria fueled paranoia, I started to think about how odd it was that I had two, perfectly symmetrical lumps in the same exact place on each boob. And then I remembered that the point of breasts was not just to flirt my way into a free meal, but to actually feed babies. And just maybe, maybe, that might require some sort of a gland that would be in each breast and feel hard to the touch. I felt like an idiot, which at least was better than thinking I was going to die.

So this October, feel free to engage in silly memes and pink ribbons. Especially remember that now is a great time to schedule yearly exams and get started checking things out for yourself. Just remember that some lumps are supposed to be there.

The people in my pillow

I was trying very hard to fall asleep last night, tossing and turning, trying to find the just right position. And then, just as I was drifting off, I started to hear these voices. I lifted my head up, nothing, no sound at all. Back down, and again with the voices. By this point I was really tired, and just could not understand what was going on. Clearly, there were no actual little people hiding and making whispered mumblings. Hopefully, I wasn't going crazy. Zach steadfastly assuring that he heard nothing really didn't help.

It wasn't until morning that I finally decided that this was just another joy of apartment living, thin walls and the weird ways sound can carry. 

Smell Like A Monster

Saturday Song

Right now the Weepies in general and this song in particular are my go to feel good music.

Quicktakes - shoe edition

• I love internet shopping, especially with the promise of free returns. Actually packing things up and walking down to the post office to send back the many rejects? Not so much. What I'm trying to say is there is a giant pile of boxes sitting in the middle of the main apartment walkway (aka one of the few spaces that is normally just space). It's not pretty or functional, but I'm kind of starting to get used to it. Which is really not good. Curse you Zappos and your one-year return policy that is not helping to spur me into action. 
• I once had a box of shoes from Zappos that I almost forgot to return by the deadline because I was using the box as a nightstand and forgot it actually had shoes in it.
• After years of listening to people rave about boots, I finally bought a pair (well, I bought several, I'm keeping one). They are very pretty, but I don't quite understand the rules of how to wear them. How cold should it be? When I wear them with a dress, am I supposed to wear socks? 
• These are my boots. I love them. I don't know if they are trendy or equestrian or motorcycle or anything. Just that they are comfy, smell amazing and make me happy. 

• Despite my lack of understanding of boots, I like them. They make me feel kind of bad ass. And warm. And normal sized. I sort of want more, but I'm picky about my shoes, and only love the expensive ones.
• Specifically, I want these. You know, if they weren't over $200. I've tried convincing myself that I would just let that be the conclusion of my fall clothing budget, but I know that I would probably just be seduced by the next can't miss sale with the can't miss thing. Even I can't lie to myself that well.

• Is it weird to follow up a post about privilege by doing a post focused on my consumer lust for pretty shoes? It feels kind of weird.

Privilege - I Haz It

I want to think of myself as a self-made woman, from self-made parents. Everyone does. I know very well all the hard things I've had to deal with in life. I know exactly how hard I've worked to overcome them. I bristle at any suggestion that somehow my hard work doesn't matter, that I didn't earn my accomplishments. And that's exactly what any suggestion of privilege or help sounds like.

I grew up poor or low middle class, depending on the year. My Dad worked more than full-time, my Mom usually worked part-time or babysat other kids. On top of that, they worked essentially another full time job managing apartments so we could have a place to live. Still, we lived in as much of a bad neighborhood as you find in the suburbs. I found used drug needles when picking up trash around the complex, there were gangs and vandalism. In just the small complex we lived in, I remember one person being shot and ultimately paralyzed and another being murdered by a stabbing. We were well off for the neighborhood, always had food, clothes and a little extra. Things were much harder after my parents divorced and didn't really start to look up until I was a teenager.

My parents had it worse. My Dad grew up one out of seven children, and while I don't think he would appreciate me displaying the details of his life on the internet for all to see, some of the stories feel more like something out of a sad book on rural poverty than anything someone real and so close to me grew up with. Both of them graduated high school, but with kids and other responsibilities piling up in their early twenties, neither was able to attend more than a few classes at community college.

Now, I'm in lawschool, I have a brother in college, and it's just a given that the rest of us will go to college and have nice, middle class lives. Both of my parents are solid middle-class homeowners. My Dad is an IT manager in a position that most of the other managers have MBAs. Life isn't perfect, but we've come very far and worked hard to get there. 

I want to look at all that and talk about hard work, boot straps and how you better believe that we earned and deserve everything we have. But that just isn't true. We are enormously privileged. My parents and now I work hard to make the best of those opportunities, but there are a whole host of other factors, some luck, but mostly just that society is set up to work better for people like us.

I had a hugely privileged education. Free schools of decent to good quality. Curriculum created by people from my general culture. At home my parents read to me, helped me with/forced me to do homework, because they had the time and knowledge to do so and that was the norm for our social group. Even not being college educated, they both read and spent time with other educated people at church and other settings. So they talked a certain way at home, so I grew up around a large vocabulary and proper grammar. I didn't have to do anything special to learn it, that was just the environment. I also had the privilege of everyone around me automatically assuming I would go to college. That played a big deal in how I viewed myself and the types of choices I made.

Even though we weren't always technically middle-class economically, I grew up in a very middle-class kind of a culture. I grew up exposed to how things work in the Middle-class world. I know what to wear to a job interview. I know how to behave in different restaurants. I can make appropriate chit chat. How? My parents taught me, by example or explicitly. I participated in mock events at church. Manners and social graces aren't signs of moral character, that's all learned behavior. The hardest working kid from a poor working class family won't have that social knowledge and that will make things harder. The same way I would be lost at a country club or other upper-crust kind of a setting.

I'm white. People are going to make more favorable assumptions about me based on that fact alone. In most business settings just my race makes me feel automatically more familiar and similar to the people in charge. And even if we really were color-blind (whatever that means) the fact that so much of what we get comes from our parents, who got stuff from their parents and so on, means that because 50 years ago my grandparents had significantly more opportunities and faced less discrimination than the grandparents of many people of color means that I get all sorts of generational benefits.

There are also other little things that I didn't earn that help me out. I have natural talents that I did nothing to earn. I didn't do anything to be "smart". Sure, I worked at school and cultivated that, but the basic ability to learn quickly is pure luck. That's a privilege.  I'm also pretty, at least according to today's standards. Not stunning, but it's enough that when I dress well and smile, I get a favorable response. That's a privilege too. I have epilepsy, and that does place some limits on me, but my overall good health is also a privilege. Just like my near constant access to health care and healthy food is too.

And that's just me. I'm also married to a man who is quite privileged and I get all kinds of benefits from that too. Both his parents are college educated, work hard and are generally wonderful. Educated, upper-middle class, white male Zach has all kinds of privilege going on.

All of that puts us in a very good position. We still have to work hard. We still have to make good financial choices. When we make mistakes, like me getting into too much law school debt by going to a Tier1 private school instead of a lower ranked but more affordable state school, or not living more bare bones than we are already, that can and does hurt us. We live on about 20k in student loans per year, the same amount the school says should be the expected budget for one person, (plus the 20k in savings we started out with) so we eat our rarely, don't have a car, live in a studio,etc. and are generally responsible. Oh, yah, the ability to get the credit to take out those loans is another privilege. But, even with all the ways we are awesome (and we are), we still wouldn't have been able to accomplish so much if we didn't have so much privilege going for us. At the very least it would have taken much, much more work on our part.

Privilege is all that and so much more. It's all the little bits of our societal framework, the way we tend to think thing just naturally work. Only, just because that's how things are, doesn't mean it's how things should be or have to be. Just that after years and years of choices and norms and power, things are such that they tend to benefit the kinds of people who generally have had the power to make the choices that create all those structures.

This doesn't mean I should feel bad or guilty about being handed a life with more than many people.  But I should recognize it. I should maybe even look at some of the societal structures that we take for granted, recognize the ways in which they aren't fair and try to change them so they are. I should certainly remember how much of everyone's lives are somewhat outside of their control for better or worse, remember that my perspective and my experience is not universal, and treat people accordingly. Just generally not being a self-righteous, judgmental biddy would also probably be good.

The Best Chocolate

I'm afraid I've become a bit of a chocolate snob. Shopping largely at Whole Foods, and their giant wall of fancy chocolate that beacons to me, urging me to try each and every kind does that to a person.

Cheap Hersheys has it's place. It's fun when you just want to have something sweet and a lot of it. But real chocolate, oh my. You only need a few pieces, because each piece demands to be savored.

It's also been fun finding all the little differences in various kinds of chocolate. For example, there is a company, TCHO, who markets all there chocolate as having a slight citrus, or floral flavor. They don't add anything, it's just the different tones from the beans.

I suppose my point is that I enjoy a lot of different chocolate. But so far I have one clear favorite.

Noi Sirius 56% bitersweet is a bit of Icelandic deliciousness. I do love the rich sharpness of good dark, chocolate, but I'm not nuts about the equally sharp texture in most bars.

This stuff is perfectly creamy. It's a little too sweet, but the deepness of the chocolate makes it work. Plus, they do it in little, thick squares that feel hefty while still being bite size and they are actually easy to break apart. The traditional wax paper wrapper is also a nice touch.

Oh, and each package contains two bars.

I'll probably have a new favorite next month, but right now I've been smuggling little bits of this stuff to class, and it is significantly improving the quality of my life.

A lot

Frequently when I'm blogging or doing some other form of writing, I'm tempted to use the phrase "a lot" to describe a great quantity of something. But I just can't use it in good conscience. This is not to say that I don't ever use a lot, well a lot. I just feel bad about it whenever I do. I can hear Ms. Barden's voice in the back of my head every time I do - "A lot is a piece of land, not a unit of measurement!"

 Ms. Barden, my high school English teacher, was by far the best teacher I've ever had (and I've had some wonderful ones). 

The first class I had her for was Honors American Literature, my 10th grade English class. I was alternatively terrified and awestruck in that class. Ms. Barden was a force of nature. She was not in any way an easy teacher. She would call students out for being idiots when they were being, well, idiots. One way or another you were going to think and work in her class. But best of all, she really respected us. She wasn't looking for form answers, she would really listen and praise when we did well. Praise that actually meant something. She was one of the first teachers who treated us like we were real, intelligent people, and nothing less would be expected. It was fantastic.

I also wrote my first, real, research paper for that class. Unfortunately, I didn't quite grasp the difference between they're, their and there by the time I turned my final paper. After about 10 corrections, she wrote in big red letters "I give up!" I felt so horrible for disappointing her, and myself, that for the next year or so I would force myself to double check every single they're/their/there because I knew there was no excuse to get them wrong. I'm only human, so I still mix them up occasionally, but I do know the difference.

Even after being slightly traumatized by the there/y're/ier, I was overjoyed when Ms. Barden took over AP English my senior year. That class was even better. We all knew each other, and that class really started to feel like home. In between Hamlet and Wuthering Heights (which remain some of my favorite novels) she would tell us stories about college and all sorts of things about growing up that somehow made everything about the scary imminent new world seem like something I could handle. I also remember her giving us her home phone number and telling us that if we were ever at a party or something we were to call her at any hour of the night, and she would be there to take us safely home. She might lecture us a bit on the drive home, but she wouldn't tell our parents - she just wanted us to be safe.

Graduating was bitersweet, especially leaving that class behind. For our final we each got to choose from a list of possible projects. My heart almost burst with pride when she told me that the 1 minute novel idea was largely done because it was perfect for me, and she wanted to see what I would come up with. It was my last high school project, and I rocked it, just like she knew I would.

I don't think remembering her every time I break one of the rules she drilled into me is quite the legacy Ms. Barden was hoping to pass on. But every time I read a good book and am forced to think about it in spite of myself, or I write something I'm proud of, I think of her. Most of all, I remember how much she cared and respected us. Thanks Ms. Barden, thanks a lot.

The last bit of the weekend always sucks

Sunday night is my least favorite time of the week. Most weekends, I feel like I have plenty of time to get everything done. So I start off with grand plans. I'm not only going to complete all the schoolwork I have to get done by Monday, but I'm also going to get a head start on the rest of the weeks assignments, plus I'm finally going to get done one or two other home things I've been meaning to do. The world is my oyster.

Friday, hey its just the tippy top beginning of the weekend. I deserve to relax.

Saturday, I start to make some token gestures towards getting things done. I open a word doc, make a very nice heading and commend myself of the good start. I may even do a few little things, like re-organize my sock drawer, that weren't even on my original list. All in all, it would have been nice to get more done, but I still feel decent and hey, I have a full day. I may not get done some of the extras, but I'll make it.

Then Sunday hits and the idea of getting anything done is excruciating. I know I need to start, time is dwindling. But, still, I can wait a little longer. Until finally it's Sunday night and I'm trying to decide whether I should just stay up later or count on an early start to get the bare essentials done in time.

Goals

I've never been very good about long, sustained goals. Anytime I decided that from now on, or even just for the next few months, I will make the bed every morning or work out more or always eat one vegetable each meal or anything else that feels like forever I end up stressed out and miserable, no matter how good of a goal it is.

However, there is a reason why I keep trying goals, even knowing that. Goals give me a little push to get out of my rut, to grow a little. And goals don't all have to be big lifestyle changes or forever commitments. I can have a goal to do one thing, just once.

So, this fall/winter I will bake some form of delicious bread. Because picking up a warm baguette from whole foods at the end of our weekly grocery trip is one of the highlights of my week, and how cool would it be if just once I was the person to create that highlight. If I like it, I may do it again. Or I may not. But, at the very least I'll have done something new and I'll know that I can do it. Plus, I'll get to eat delicious bread. Yum.

A Baby in Parliment

I'm not a Mom yet. I probably won't be for quite some time. But even knowing that getting to be a parent is a far off in the future thing, I already stress out about how on earth we will manage to be good parents, financially sound and mentally stable, especially with me about to enter the demanding (but necessary to pay off student loans) field of law.

So today when I saw the following picture of Licia Ronzulli, a member of the European Union’s Parliament from Italy, sitting and voting in her parliamentary seat, with her newborn baby asleep in a sling, I felt my heart jump a little. Seeing a powerful, accomplished woman simultaneously performing an important job while taking care of her baby? I know that this isn't the whole picture of her life, but it's still a rare image, and maybe even the only one of it's kind I've ever seen.

Good work-life balance is not the norm. It's not how the world is set up. But I am so grateful for every father and mother who pushes a little bit against the norms of how people conceive work and family. 
I don't mean this as an attack on stay-at-home parents, working parents with demanding schedules or anyone else. Those decisions are almost always hard, they almost always involve some sacrifice and they are almost always sincerely made because that is what they feel is best for their family. Any family that tries to make everything work has my respect and admiration. Sometimes we can barely seem to figure things out for just the two of us.

But I also appreciate that every choice individual families make, whether they mean it to or not, affects the general culture and structure we all live and work in and thus affects the choices of others. And yes, I am biased towards people who make choices that I feel help to open up the range of possibilities for everyone. Because I honestly believe that far to often people aren't able to make the best choice possible for themselves and their family because there are so many factors of our culture and our economy that make it impossible for some wonderful options to even be imagined, let alone a reality.

So while I celebrate every family who does their best at figuring everything out, I am especially grateful for the people who push things a little more open for all families and especially give me a little bit of hope that we too can do what is best for our someday family, truly whatever that may be.

My Incentive for Finally Changing my Name

Tickets (in my married name) all set for December the second Zach and I get done with finals. I just need to get my first passport in the next week or so (hence the need for all the other new ID). For a girl who has never been anywhere international besides Tijuana and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls this is so exciting, it's been all I can do to focus on normal life and not just read travel guides and dream.

Name Change

When we were engaged we had so many, many discussions about what to do about our names - our last names. Names mean something, its part of your identity. I don't care what other people do for their name, but I do feel like when someone calls your name, it should feel like you. I wanted something that felt like us.

The idea of just chopping off my last name felt like throwing a piece of me in the trash. Zach was very understanding, but he had always just assumed that someday he would fall in love, get married and start the lovely HisBachelorName family with Mrs. HisBachelorName. And while he listened and didn't want me to do anything I didn't want, it was still a little hard for him to let that go.

So, we played with possibilities for hours. We didn't like not having the same name. It felt too much like acting like nothing big had happened, like we weren't together as family. Moving my last name to a second middle name felt like a lame compromise token move. Him adding it as a middle name too felt a little better, but not much. Our families meant to much for us to just create a new smooshed together name, plus all the possibilities felt ridiculous.

Even though it wasn't fun at the time, I look back on all those discussions fondly. It was one of our first big things we had to figure out together, and there we were trying to find what was right for us, our family, listening and respecting and working together. I love our name if only for that alone. We finally decided that we both would change our name and become MyLastName-HisLastName. Why? Well, partially because HisLastName-MyLastName sounded like a law firm, not a name. But mostly because it felt most like us, like our family. It's a bit silly, but to me it felt like neither of us were loosing part of who we were, just adding on the other person to ourselves.

After all that, almost immediately after getting married I changed my name on facebook. And no where else. Sure, our name had some wonderful meaning to me, but I'm really lazy. There wasn't any immediate need to get things in order. So I didn't. For over 2 years that was just fine. Until it suddenly wasn't and I needed new ID, with my new name, right away or else.

So, yesterday I finally went down to the Social Security Office and the DMV and got everything squared away. Word of advice? Don't ever wait more than 2 years. Things expire. As in, after two years you need all sorts of other proof of your name change besides just the marriage certificate. Proof you don't have because clearly if you had that it would mean you had done all the name change stuff and thus didn't need to be doing it now. I honestly think they let me squeak by very much against regulations because they just weren't sure what to do with me and my sad pile of all the ID I could muster (birth certificate, blood donor card, lease agreement, anything and everything). 5 hours, far too many lines, 2 offices latter and there I was, new ID, new name and all.

My new ID photo looks like a serial killer mugshot. But my new name, oh my name makes me so happy. For as long as I put it off and as hesitant as I was to change anything when we started those talks years ago, I was half expecting to feel some sense of loss or sadness. But it just felt like me, only better.

Day at the Book Festival

I can't quite put my finger on why the book festival was so fun. On one hand, we woke up earlier than we ever do on a Saturday. Crammed onto a crowded metro, only to get to a slightly less crowded series of tents. We spend about 7 hours in 90 degree weather. At least 4 of those hours were spend waiting in lines underneath the very strong sun. The remaining 3 were spent fighting crowds for seats in the slightly less hot giant tents so we could listen to people talk.

But, on the other hand we got to spend one of the last summery days of the season outside on the lovely national mall. We got to see some amazing authors and listen to some really cool insights on writing in general and their books in particular, including plenty of fun stories. There were also some really sweet questions from little kids who aspired to be writers, and some equally sweet answers. We got to spend a little time with some of our favorite authors, and have the signed books to show for it. Not good with social situations me got to be in an atmosphere were everyone was as book crazy as me. Even stuck in a line, I knew the people next to you shared a common love of a certain book enough to stand in crazy lines too, so we were able to have some fun conversations and get some good book recommendations.

See what I did there? Same story, different interpretations? It's lawyer magic! (Or why I shouldn't blog while finishing up a case theory assignment for law clinic.)

Basically, book festival was awesome. Even during the less than great parts, I was so excited to be there that I barely cared.

Book festival started at 10, with my first must see event at 10:30. We originally planned to show up early, but ended up showing up just barely in time to listen to Suzanne Collins, the genius behind The Hunger Games. She had some really interesting things to say about all the elements of her life as a military brat, a Mom in NYC on 9/11 and other  things that came into play and just generally how she wrote the books because she feels like we try to ignore how much war really does affect kids, we don't talk to them about it or help them process it, and maybe if we had those kinds of discussions we would all be more thoughtful about conflict. And then it was question time, and we moved immediately into tweens asking about Team Gale or Team Peeta (According to Collins, apparently Team Finnick has been getting quite a bit of support on the tour too, because heaven forbid a character be awesome outside of the context of a love triangle or square.)

Afterwards, I grossly underestimated the book signing lines, so thinking I had half an hour I moved over to the fiction tent where some time-travel scottish romance author was talking. I stayed just long enough to find out that apparently the attraction of men in kilts is "the idea that they could have you up against a wall in a heartbeat" (she has a point) before getting a call from Zach telling me that I might want to run over to get in line right this second.

He was right. I showed up about 25 minutes before signing started, and there were already so many people in front of me that I couldn't see the front. They moved the lines up in a very organized, staggered system, which mean we would just move up 10ft or so every 10 minutes. I'm sure there is a good reason for that, but without the reassurance of frequently moving I was convinced that there was no way I was going to get through. To their credit, a combination of limiting books to be stamped to 1 (she has a hand injury, so she uses an awesome stamp), being willing to stay late, and some incredible assemble line action up front meant we were all able to get through. Sure, it was a little impersonal, but still kind of a fun thrill.

Learning my lesson, I got into the next line right after getting my book signed/stamped. Meanwhile, Zach did his thing. We really didn't see each other much during the middle, just frequently checked in (bless cell phones) and briefly met up to get a drink, as we only thought to bring one water bottle and we didn't want either of us to wilt in the heat. I got one other book signed, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's not that great of a book, but I got it for $5 at Powells and there wasn't anyone speaking when she was signing, so why not. The only downside was that the line the cued up next to us was for the Author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Like everyone who was once a child, I love that book and it was disappointing to not have the time to pick up a copy and run over. I even had Zach try, but the book selling tent was sold out. Oh well. Mistakes happen. Even in Australia.

My very last line was one of the best. Blogging goddess, the Pioneer Woman. Wow. Of all the people I saw, she was by far the funniest and most gracious. I was probably only talking with her for maybe a minute, but she manged to make that feel sweet and personable. She said nice things about my name, made a cute joke and was generally awesome. Her teeth were also very white and her voice was much higher and tinklier than it is in my head. All in all, I've always liked her (or more so her recipes) but never quite got all the fuss. I get it now.

Plus, she signed my book way cooler than anyone else. Very big, bold and wonderful.

That was the last of the line standing and signing. Zach and I finally rejoined and ended up just collapsing on some empty chairs at the History and non-fiction tent for a while. We listened to the tail end of the Pulitzer biographer (journalism - always crazy) and a cute, feel good interview between an author on a book of inspirational stories of immigrants and his journalist wife. I left Zach there once I felt like I could stand again and went back to the children and teens tent for Katherine Patterson.

I don't know what it is about this woman, but I always sob at her books. Bridge to Terebithia, Jacob Have I Loved - great books, but I will only read them when I feel the need for a good cry. Apparently she can even work her magic in short doses. She only read for a few minutes from her new book about Kosovo refuges, and that's all it took for the tears to show up. Overall, she was just a very nice southern school librarian type - the perfect mix of insightful, gracious and funny. Generally speaking the festival seemed to be full of young families, a handful of twenty somethings and a whole host of women who just felt like school or children's librarians. I loved the librarians of my childhood, so just being around so many people with that vibe really made me happy. I miss the awesome mother earth types. Just generally it was nice to be out in DC with book lovers and without seeing a single suit.

And that was pretty much that. Well, we tried to go to dinner at a place we had a Restaurant.com certificate for, only to walk 10 blocks and find it closed. Much as I was food grr! at the moment, and ate like a ravenous wolf at choice #2 at Five Guys, it was still a great day. Oh books, I love you so.