My Yellow Polka Dot Bikini is Blue

And it's not a bikini, it's a kick ass cocktail dress.

Okay, so you know the song I'm referencing I'll assume. And you might recall this Danon yogurt commercial where this woman has a yellow polka dot bikini hanging in her room. And as the seasons turn outside her window, she keeps walking in looking at it while eating yogurt. And at the end she heads for the beach in her bikini - the point being that she lost weight eating yogurt instead of ice cream. The bikini was there as her inspiration through the winter to keep losing weight.

Incidentally, much of what I said wasn't actually made explicit in the commercial - they did a good job of playing to the collective feminine knowledge!

But anyway, today I went shoe shopping around Moberly, and one of the places I went to was Stage. I browsed through their clothes section, and found this dark turquoise blue cocktail dress for 80% off. I tried it on and it actually fit, technically, although I need to lose the tummy pouch to really get away with wearing it in public. But since it was only $12, I decided this was my new inspiration dress. I bought it and it's hanging in plain view to remind me of my 10-15 pound goal. It already stopped me from having ice cream today. :-)

I had a couple other good finds - two pairs of slacks for work over the summer for $13 a piece (another steal) and a few pairs of shoes at less of a steal, including a pair of Sketchers. My knees have really been acting up of late, so I decided I really have to start wearing better quality shoes. Sort of. I'm still adjusting to it. I bought the Sketchers at Stage, but then I also bought cheap Payless shoes . . . but I bought lots of insoles for them!!

If they had Law, I think I would have scored 100%. But this will do.

You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours! English 100% Linguistics 92% Journalism 92% Mathematics 83% Psychology 83% Anthropology 75% Philosophy 75% Engineering 67% Sociology 58% Art 58% Theater 50% Dance 33% Chemistry 17% Biology 0% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

I continue to follow good decisions with bad ones - especially in the sleep area. For instance, after 14-hour nonstop productivity day, I should have just gone to bed, but instead I stayed up another hour and a half to watch the first part of the CMA awards - including Faith Hill's poor reaction to Carrie Underwood winning female vocalist of the year. (Cheers to Jason for first pointing Ms. Underwood out to me way back when she was still one of several American Idol constestants left . . . ). Faith has tried to pull it off as a joke, but that's a little hard to believe.

Not that I totally blame her. The CMA awards are a little strange . . . Carrie Underwood, like Gretchan Wilson before her, won both the horizon award for newcomers and top female vocalist of the year. It seems odd to give the same award to both. And Faith, despite being a powerhouse of country music (albeit one that's becoming marginalized a bit by her pop style), has only won the award once. That's unusual, considering the CMA likes to give out awards to the same performer in the same category for a few years in a row. The extreme example is Brooks & Dunn, who've won top vocal duo 14 times in the last 15 years.

Which is another pet peeve of mine - Brooks & Dunn are great, but there's other good talent that should be rejected. My pet peeve isn't really w/ Brooks & Dunn though so much as it is with the fact that Big & Rich haven't been recognized EVER for ANY CMA award. They're still fairly new - only two CD's out (though a third one must be in the works) but they got beaten in the Horizon award, and now they don't really qualify for it, and the CMA doesn't seem to have any intention of giving the award to anybody besides Brooks & Dunn. Heck if I know why.

It was an all together disappointing results tally for me, I think. I would have like to see Sugarland get the Horizon Award - especially if Carrie Underwood got female vocalist. Carrie's outsold them and gotten more media and radio air time, but Sugarland has made some big splashes this year too - and they are fantastic singers as well as Carrie.

All in all though it appears to be a good year for Country music. There's a lot of recognition going on that country has got a remarkable portion of damn good song writers, as acknolwedged by such varied sources as John Bon Jovi and the Washington Post:

http://www.cmt.com/news/articles/1526126/20060314/bon_jovi.jhtml?headlines=true
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR2006110601050.html

Returning from the dead on the Day of the Dead.

My first new blog post in approaching two month . . . yeesh! Every week I keep saying "okay, within a couple weeks it will all calm down" and it keeps not calming down. But after next week I will have finished both my hearings for the clinic, in which case I will basically be done with that class for the semester. Yaye! I've enjoyed working in the Legal Aid Clinic - it's been a great learning experience, and a real change of pace. But I was in the clinic until 4am this morning working on the memorandum of law for the first hearing.

But I finally understand how you all did it! I never managed such a feat in undergrad - I pooped out by 2am, woke up at 6am, and then finished it. But of late the whole "getting out of bed" has not been easy - though I'm doing it, consistently getting up between 7:30am and 8am every day even when I don't have class until 10am or later. So I knew if I slept it just wasn't getting finished. And the strangest thing happened too . . . I wasn't tired! I mean clearly I was since I zonked the second I got home, but for some reason I just didn't feel all that fatigued last night. It was really really weird.

Of course today I am zoned out. I got about six hours of sleep, which is quite respectiable except when you've put in a full day's work between 8pm and 4am.

On the bright side, the wedding date is set! Which serves incidentally as the announcement that I'm engaged, since I didn't actually post that on this board, but most everyone knows anyway, so I figured it wasn't that big a deal. But just in the past few days the reception hall and priest came into line; Fr. Dan from the Cornell Catholic Community agreed to preside and we found a great reception spot - Wagner Winery. We've had Sage Chapel reserved for awhile now; the date is Sept. 22nd. All we need is the photographer and all the major pieces will be in place.

Of course I still haven't decided on my bridesmaids yet . . . gotta do that pretty soon . . . but it's been totally eclipsed by the job search decision, which is fairly stressful. I've had five job offers, and 2-3 of them are still contenders at this point . . . and I've got 2 others that still haven't gotten back to me. *sigh* We shall see, we shall see.

"The MidWest, where they believe in God, country, and breakfast."

That actually was Rob's quote making fun of me. I was once again reminded today just how ridiculously well he knows me. Here's the list of unconscious (on my part) cues that he's pegged so far:

the intellectual sigh - when I'm thinking something kind of complicated / deep etc

the authoritative thigh slap - when I've got something not so good to say but am not saying it, or alternatively, in its less hostile form, the "I have nothing to add to the conversation" signal

breathing in that way - the uh-oh we're about to have one of those conversation signals


These are just the ones he's called me on so far - and each time I've been rather startled at just how accurate his perception of the thoughts in my head were! It makes me feel a little guilty that I can't read him nearly so well.

How to really make the feminist foremothers shudder

So apparently lots of little 5-7 year old girls think they are too fat. And this is a UK article, not an American article, so there's none of that "McDonald culture" to explain!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/03/08/do0801.xml

The little girls are mimicing their mothers not only in their high heels but also in their obsessions and insecurities, apparently, which is a sad state of affairs. But it just reinforces an opinion that has slowly but surely been settling in over the years for me, that we women are really our own worst enemy. Generally I tend to believe that, when dealing w/ characteristics of large groups of people as a group, nurture plays more of a role than nature. So I have wondered from time to time if this whole "women are timid, less confrontational, less likely to be asservtive, yadda yadda" would fade away over time as younger embolded generations of women grow up. I have found it an annoying but unavoidable fact that there do seem to be more women who are timid and self-conscious than there are guys who are that way. Not as bad in the USA as in, say, China, but all the same, any discrepancy at all is a bit annoying. This article just goes to show that we ourselves are making it worse.

If I ever have daughters I will particularly encourage them to play sports, because I think in addition to all the benefits it has for both sexes (discipline, social skills, health, independence) it has particularly good benefits for girls, because it forces them to be a little more assertive, which carries over into the rest of life. It also takes a traditionally male area of life and allows women to have a little claim on it - to feel like there is no area of our common lives that a man can boldly venture and a girl shouldn't.

I was going to throw in the whole "Marilyn Monroe was a size 12" thing in here, but thought I should check up on it first. It appears that at her heaviest, she was indeed a modern size 12 . . . but I'm not sure how persuasive that is in saying we've gotten higher standards as a culture, since her lightest was 30 pounds lighter.

But that's not really the point.

Just what you want at the end of a 13 hour flight . . .

is a delay to add to what was already a three hour layover. A friend described the Chicago O'Hare airport as the place where perfectly healthy itineraries go to die. That's proving to be an annoyingly accurate description! On the other hand, at least this concourse has wireless access for a not to shabby rate. It's a good thing too, since there are very few other things to keep me occupied here. Strangely enough the best airport I've ever been through is Pittsburg - weird, since it's not such a fantastic city by all accounts. But it has a whole mall within the concourses, so it's never difficult for a girl to wile away her layovers there. :-)

But alas, I am in Chicago not Pittsburg, and so I must find other ways to amuse myself. I will be very glad to get home to Ithaca, though that's not for another week and a half. I'm a little tired of traveling. While I'm in China I take things fairly well in stride; I enjoy being there if for no other reason than because I get to speak Chinese. It's really amazing - it's like a switch turned on in my brain. I expected that I would start remembering words that I used to know, but I didn't expect that I would start remembering Chinese characters again. I had all but forgotten everything I knew about reading and writing Chinese, but within about a week and a half of being in the country I was finding that suddenly even that started coming back.

Oh well. All the shops would be closed in Pittsburg now anyway. Maybe I'll watch the Princess Diaries II again. It's one of those really bad, but horribly addicting movies that I fall victim to. I think though I probably only have a couple more viewings of it left before I'm thoroughly finished with it.

You know what I'll really miss about China though? The me-sized chairs. I could actually sit all the way back in the seat and have my feet planted firmly on the ground. I never mind being short when I'm standing - only when I sit down, because my feet don't touch the ground, which is rather uncomfortable and not terribly healthy for the knee joints, since all the weight of my lower legs hangs from where the knees hook over the chair. Ah, to have chairs imported from China! Such is my dream!! :-)

A Guide for V-Day, or something

Okay, as most of my readers (*as she thinks, gee that makes it sound like I have readers*) are guys this blog will probably be unappreciated, but per a GAIM conversation tonight, I'm feeling inspired to defend and disparage the realm of the romantic comedy. All romantic comedies are not created equal - i.e. they are not all crap.

Level 1: Classic
When Harry Met Sally
This one is in a league all of it's own . . . Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in probably the only modern romantic comedy that can claim to be a modern classic.

NOTE: If Pretty Woman could be called a romantic comedy, then it would rank in this category as it too is a modern classic, but I'm not sure it quite qualifies. It's one of those rare movies that manages to just be a romance - not a romantic comedy, not a dramatic romance (a la When A Man Loves a Woman, the Notebook, etc) - just a romance.

Level 2: Well-Done
Sweet Home Alabama, You've Got Mail, and While You Were Sleeping.
These movies manage to be original (or well, at least if you forgive YGM for being a remake . . .but if you take The Shop Around the Corner and YGM's premise together was original compared to the genre of rom. Com. as a whole), funny, and believable both in their portraits of people and the evolution of the romance.


Level 3: Strangely Addictive though not so Good.
The Prince and Me, She's All That, Bridget Jones' Diary

Level 4: Unmemorable:
IQ

Level 5: Painful
Never Been Kissed, most Hugh Grant movies, My Best Friend's Wedding, Bridget Jones Diary II

Level 6: A Scourge Upon the Earth
Serving Sara
(quite possibly the single worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life).

"Fifty longnecks for my new friends"
~Big & Rich, "Kick My A$$"

On Monday driving up to Vestal, I heard on the radio that a big name country group, Big & Rich, were giving a totally free, completely improptu concert at this music hall in Binghamton. So on a 1/2 hour's notice, Rob and I hopped into the car and headed down there. He was not only perfectly amiable about it, although he'd had a 13 hour day at that point, but he actually seemed to enjoy himself, which is unusual since spontaneous attendance at a loud country rock concert for which one has to wait in line for an hour is not normally his cup of tea.
I was incredibly excited. Big & Rich really shook up country music when they broke into the bigtime with Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy - the one song I really regretted not hearing! I'm sure they played it eventually; they were playing until 2am in the morning apparently. We left after about an hour. I could have stayed longer, but Rob had a morning meeting, and he'd been so amiable that I thought it would be selfish of me to stay any longer.

The music was awesome though, and we were 20 feet from the stage. Rob got some great pictures - well, great for the fact that they were shot in very poor lighting with moving subjects - and I just had a great blast. I think the impromptu nature of it put the whole crowd in a great mood - free music, an unexpected variation to our boring humdrum lives . . . and on top of that, Big & Rich announced up front that they were picking up the bar tab for the whole crowd!

I commented to Rob that this wasn't the type of thing we would have done together 2 years ago, implying that he would have been less amiable and willing to enjoy himself even then.He denied it at first, and then replied, 'No, you're right, 2 years ago you wouldn't have told me that you really wanted to go, and then when we didn't you would have complained about it.' I laughed and had to agree he was probably right on that point.

I guess we've both learned a few things!

It's Not Why You Think

The eDiets subject line in my junk email box got me: Thinner or Smarter - Shocking survey results. In my present state of wishful thinking, I was hoping to read the survey and discover that smart women often have more trouble managing their weight because they are so busy doing smart-women things like studying for my property exam. (The slender bodies of most of my female classmates make this wishful thinking particularly wishful, but whatever.) Silly me, it was yet another survey pointing out that a majority of women, when asked, say they would rather be slimmer than have a higher IQ.

The article was of course bemoaning how this reflects our society's value on women's looks above their brains, yadda yadda. I don't have a particular beef w/ the idea that society values women's looks more than brains - it's open to some debate but all the same I don't feel compelled to vehemently contest it. But silly people! That's not why women answered the survey that way!!!

It's because we women are clearly the more intelligent species already. We've already got the brains we want, now its time to get the bodies we want!!

And if I didn't have to dig back into Easements and Covenants I would be inspired to go to the gym.

Six days and counting until I'm done with my 1L year . . .

Confessions of Sci-Fi Traitor: The Romance of Revolution

Hmm, here's a lesson that I shouldn't whine. The day after my last post was Slope Day, which despite the gorgeous weather I resolutely spent inside studying for Crim Law. The day ended well, though, when by chance El and I happened to both be lacking dinner plans, and so Rob and I went up to her place to have a BBQ w/ her and Darren. It was a lot of fun, although it was 10pm before the burgers were fully thawed, cooked, and servable. Luckily there were some munchies, otherwise I might have been unable to be in such a good mood . . . we all know how I get when I'm HUNGRY. :-D And because it wouldn't be slope day w/o alcohol (or so they say) I finally broke open that bottle of wine that's been sitting on my table untouched since my pre-Barristers Ball party. It's called the 7 Deadly Zins, and we all enjoyed it quite a lot. And one bottle between 6 people (two of El's friends came) doesn't lead to much intoxication - just gets everybody a little relaxed.

Perhaps though the wine went to my head more than I thought. Somehow at the end of the night Star Trek came up, and Darren was laughing about El's decided opinions on Star Wars v. Star Trek, and she was spouting her long-held opinion that one cannot be a true Star Trek fan and really like Star Wars all that well - you either have to like one or the other better, and Star Trek is clearly superior. After protesting that the two were completely different animals and it was possible to like them equally, I made my confession: if I had to choose, I'd say I like Star Wars better. (Discounting the prequels, obviously.)

Really it shouldn't be surprising. First of all, Star Wars has a much better assortment of short characters - R2D2, Yoda, and Wicket - than does Star Trek. Ah Wicket, my favorite ever! And Yoda, next in line . . . And then second of all, it's a story about revolution, about the underdogs fighting on the side of right against evil, battling on the basis of their convictions, brave adventurers risking everything - I mean COME ON, that's my favorite type of storyline ever! It's why I loved to populate my childhood with warrior princesses instead of Disney princess (although I liked the Disney ones well enough, too. But Jasmine was more my style - she was the most rebellious of them all.) And despite my disagreement w/ many of the morals of the 60s hippies, I've always been fascinated w/ the war protests and rebellion of that era; I was thrilled when 60s-retro came back into style. (It still influences today's trends - peasant skirts and the like - although we aren't in the full-scale throwback that lasted for like one year.) And while Tom goes for the King Arthur story, I've always been much more intrigued by the story of Robin Hood (which I think of not as much in terms of its "give to the poor" message as its "rebel against the evil Sheriff / prince").

And after all, what's my all time favorite musical? Les Miserables, the story of the French Revolution. "Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry mean, it is the music of a a people who will not be slaves again" - oooh, I get excited just thinking about it. :-D And I never really cared for Cosette (the leading love interest) all that much truth be told - she was a bit of a wuss I think. Eponine was much more my style, out there being all saucy in the bars and fighting alongside the men at the barricades . . . after all, my chosen name in French class for all 4 years of highschool was "Eponine."

I mean, I wrote my freaking thesis on Chinese social uprisings.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for revolutions.
(At least the ones that really are on the side of right.)

Jane Austen Rocks My World

Ah . . . contracts is done. I'm glad of course in that I am one final closer to the end of the year, but Contracts was one of my favorite classes and one of the ones I best understood, so my feeling is nothing like what I'll feel when I finish Civ Pro. Ugg I hate that class - and this semester it is my last final!

In the meantime I have been engaging in escapism to get away from my finals studying whenever possible. A few weeks ago I rented the Kiera Knightly Pride and Prejudice, and I've been on a Jane Austin kick ever since. It's really difficult to get ahold of the movies though! The 6-hour miniseries version of P&P is constantly on back request, and even to get a copy of the movie Persuasion I had to put in a hold request. So for the week that I've had the movie I've been watching it every time I want a little - or long- break from studying.

And last night I indulged in catching up on Alias and Lost. This morning as I woke up I reflected that it's a sad change from the days when I used to have friends that distracted me. I sort of make the excuse that it's because I never have very much time at once to devote to hanging out; I miss the days when I used to be able to randomly and unannounced drop by Westbourne after finishing intramurals on Jessup fields and just hang out w/ the W guys for an hour or whatever I had. But the whole "not enough time" thing doesn't really work when you consider that I only got about an hour of work done yesterday, the whole day - between the gym, and the library, and catching up with some of my law school friends at Aladdin's yesterday, and watching movies. Then it comes down to the fact that my study breaks are too random and I don't have the type of friends that I can just spontaneously interrupt. I think that's as much a reflection on the types of friendships as it is the people in them. For instance, El and I can never seem to quite make a connection - she called the other night and I was engrossed in finals studying and she didn't leave a message; I called her yesterday and didn't manage to talk with her.

And of course, I could have caught up with Renea and Jeremy down at Benchwarmers - they long ago gave me a standing invitation to join their group of friends that get together every Thursday evening to hang out. I took them up on it once, before the first week of classes this semester. That's another set of friends that between lack of effort and incompatible schedules Rob and I just never seem to catch up with. I had originally thought about going last night, but the rest of the day had been so unproductive that I felt guilty and wanted to stay home - but I sort of defeated the purpose by staying home and not doing work.

So all in all, I can hardly say I'm "friendless", but still I'll be glad when finals are over and I can have no excuse to prevent me from really making more effort to be social. I seem to have fallen into a "Jason-sophomore-year" slump ;-) only this time there's no me to come pester me and say "get out and do something!" Not that I was terribly successful anyway back then so I suppose there's no reason to suspect I would be successful pestering me. ;-)

Okay, so this attempt seems to have worked. This is a rather amusing music video.




Let's see what happens.

We're number 2!!!!

The number 2 result when you google "law" that is. I have recently been accepted onto LII - Legal Info Institute, and I'm thrilled. Kudos to Brian (computer Brian, not law school Brian) for first introducing me to the web site. Each year they take ~25 new associate editors to write up summaries and explanations of Supreme Court cases on the web. The guy in charge of it did an excellent job pitching it to us. He pointed out that in our legal careers it will be very helpful to be able to explain to clients in plain english just what is going on in the case, and he emphasized how much readership it gets - waaaay more than the print journals (Cornell Law Review, Cornell International law Journal, and Cornell Journal of law and Public Policy). And we get paid for it. It suits me philosophically to be trying to connect this world of legalese with the real world impact these cases have on people. And it suits me to be on the more tech-savvy, more "with it" journal that's geared to people other than lawyers, since if law school is any indication the legal field is disgustingly incestuous. And it suits me to not be on Law Review, which by all accounts gives you no practical skills (except things like "team work" and "performing under pressure" with which I have ample experience thank you) but does give you a fair amount of prestige, which the legal field takes ridiculously seriously.

I'm not dissing on the law in general. There are lots of lawyers out there who aren't like that - I've met and talked with some of them. Cornell Law, however, feeds the corporations / uber-large law firms, and in that world, things like prestige take on importance far beyond what could possibly be justified.

The profs are great, I'm getting a great education, and I even like my fellow law students as people to hang out with and dish gossip with and commiserate with. But the sort of "institutional outlook" of the school bugs me. However, there are a fair number of fellow Cornell Law students who also think such things are a bunch of hog-wash, and it's nice to know

I don't know why I'm getting on a soap box about how much I don't want to be on Law Review - its extremely competitive to be on it anyway so I probably would never have been given an offer. But I still can't definitively say "No, I will not do the writing competition to try to get onto Law Review" because I have this nagging voice saying "you should at least try - it might be good for your career." But oh how I do NOT want to do it!! I'm very happy to have landed on LII - that's where I wanted to be. So those who care about prestige may have their Law Review seats with no jealous looks from me!

But now it's bed time.

"You're thinking about something. I can tell by the way you're breathing."

The scary thing is, Rob was right when he said that - I was thinking about something. And by "something" Rob and I both meant not the broad "there is any thought in your brain" but a kind of "something" that usually makes boyfriends go "uh-oh . . . it's going to be one of those conversations." Only this time I hadn't had any plans to speak up, or for that matter any urge to speak. We were curled up on the couch and as I was in that hazy not really sleeping land, I was beginning to think about summer jobs. Its so ridiculously freaking _______ that he could tell just by the way I was breathing!

But it made me laugh, and it made me reflect on just how well he really does know me. Although, in fairness, he's aided by the fact that I am notoriously transparent. But still - it wasn't even the look on my face or the tone of my voice . . . it was my breathing!!

I haven't had a good game of Nerts in a long time . . .

Rainy days bring out my nostalgia. Card games used to be the Luth family pasttime; every get together inevitably turned into a card fest. The children loved to play Nerts, a fast-paced free for all variation on Solitaire that gets the blood racing like no other card game invented. The adults always went for the more sedate Hand and Foot, which was more conducive to chatting. Like Nerts, it also had the added benefit of being best played by many people - 8 people (4 teams) is the ideal number I think. In a family as large as ours it's important to have games that include lots of people. It's an interminably long game that requires two decks of card per person plus one more. It says something about our family that we never seemed to have difficulty finding 17 decks of cards - in fact, we always made a mental note of packing a couple decks to contribute to the pot, or to use in Nerts.

I was thinking about my nephews and 6months in the womb niece Eva too, and pondering that since my own child rearing days are probably a fair ways off still I can at least try to be the "cool" aunt that always comes out to play. I suppose the little ones were on my mind because of Andrea's shower over spring break - the mother of little Eva, whose name isn't official until the birth certificate. And then I was wondering how old they would have to be before I can teach them Nerts. I decided probably about 6. They have to know how to count first, but that's about the only requirement. I know my "little" cousins Charlie and Travis (now highschoolers) started playing with us older cousins when they were very young - probably 5 or 6. They always had to have a partner of course, at that age.

If I had more time I think it would be worth it to try to be a Big Sister or do some sort of reading program or something; I'm not sure what. I haven't thought about the Children's Museum that often of late, but I realize with every time I see my sisters' progeny just how much of an impact it made on me. My cousin Melanie, who's around my age, spent most of Andrea's baby shower playing with the kids in the yard. I envied her a bit, but it's good to be an adult sometimes too. Still, as the event was winding down I got in a good twenty minutes or so amusing Noah by helping him bounce on Kate's big exercise ball. I had been playing with him before the shower as well - we arrived a little early to help set up, but since that day was my only chance to see him over break I took the opportunity to play. Kate commented "You're so good with Noah. I'm just not good with children." Which isn't true - or at least, she's very good with Alex her son, which is all that is really important anyway. But it was a nice vote of confidence.

And somehow, believe it or not, I think being around little children calms me. They are innocent and really quite easy to please, when it comes down to it, and with all the intense complicated people around me (myself being such a person too) it's just such a relief to be around little people who are so simple.

I felt the same way when I visited with my Grandma Sander, who's almost 91 now and still of sound mind and only a little hard of hearing. I went in to visit her once with Mom, and we talked about quilting again, which is a growing connection I have with her. And then I spent one morning taking her to prayer service and on errands. She was so ecstatically grateful to have someone to take her on errands. She uses the OATS bus quite a bit to get around town when she needs to, but for some reason it really pleased her that I offered to take her around - she seemed to think it was infinitely easier, which I suppose it was.

There are a lot of complicated things in my life right now. So when I come upon that rare interaction with someone that is so simple, in which I can be so certain what the right course of action is, when I can please just by doing what is natural and easy and uncomplicated, it's precious indeed.

I have always felt most sure of myself when I am being a friend, and in many ways law school has made me quite a bad friend. (Law school just being the most recent excuse, actually.) And by "being a friend" I mean something more than the passive state of friendly relations with someone - I mean doing some act of friendship for another person. Sometimes it's for strangers, like stopping last night outside the Johnson at 10:30pm to give a jump to 2 slightly shady guys in their pick-up. Not the least risky move, granted, but I don't like jumping to conclusions, and the only strike against them was that their car was old and they were wearing clothes of people who've been outside doing a dirty job all day. All that says is they work hard for their living. Or acts of friendship for closer acquaintances. I was reflecting that in all the complicated, sometimes tenuous friendships I've created here with invariably intense people (when compared w/ the general population as opposed to each other) the only thing I feel unequivocally good about is being able to offer unconditional friendship to one particular someone who runs the risk of societal condemnation. I didn't do it on purpose to pat myself on the back - in fact I think I've been marveling a little at my own internal reactions and how they aren't what I expected.

The child, the old woman, the stranger, the outcast . . . (Well okay "outcast" is stretching the truth to breaking point) . . . they all have something in common. Those moments are few and far between when I can be a friend to such ones, but each such moment renews me.

What do you know, a talent show where people actually have talent . . .

Last night was Cabaret, the Law School's annual fundraiser for the public interest grants they award to students seeking, obviously, public interest work. A silent auction was going on in one room for donations from students and the community (I donated 3 roundtrips for running errands, which Rob valiantly but belatedly went to bid on in order to prevent me from actually having to give someone those 3 roundtrips . . . they had already taken the sheet away.) In the main room they were mixing a live auction for donations from professors (dinner w/ the prof, golf w/ the prof, flower arrangements, and so on) with performances by law students. I was quite impressed. There were some excellent dancers, (such as a traditional dance from XinJiang province in China and an Irish step dance) some rather funny musical acts (a hilarious music and dance rendition of a poem a written about a famous Contracts case, a Gilbert and Sullivan rip-off about what it's like to be a 1L - in the tradition of We Didn't Go to Harvard but law school specific), and some quality musical acts (such as Andy on the dulcimer and three guitarists doing a couple pop rock songs). I'm used to the junior high talent shows where the "talent" of the performers is somewhat debatable. This was good!

We had a nice dinner beforehand at ZaZa's too. It's an Italian place down on Cascadilla and 13, and I'm rather proud of myself for picking it because it turned out to be a great venue. Although I actually can't be too proud. Rob heard about it from a coworker and suggested it as a possibility for our Valentine's Day dinner, but we went to Boatyard instead. But we were planning on going to dinner with Kiernan, Duncan, and Desi, and Desi wanted some place better than Applebees, and Kiernan and I wanted someplace cheaper than the Heights. ZaZa's fit the bill perfectly. It had cloth pillars and cloth on the ceiling - an unusual and quite nice atmosphere. It reminded me of something off of Trading Spaces but much classier.

It was a nice dinner, and really nice for Rob to get to meet my friends in a little bit better setting than the semi-formal. He doesn't like occassions where the circumstances dictate that you have to kind of work hard to keep up a conversation - like places where loud music is playing! But it was a nice dinner, and we had no awkward pauses or dull moments at all, as far as I was concerned. Duncan was a "new guy" too, as we had never met Kiernan's new . . . . friend . . . before. He was very interesting and amiable, and all in all it was a nice evening.

Rob and I left Cabaret pretty early - 9:30pm. It went on for hours and then there were after parties, so people didn't get home until 4 and 5 am apparently. I'm vaguely disappointed that I didn't stick it out, but not terribly. I mean you know me the party animal!! You know though I would drink a hell of a lot more if I didn't have to pay for the alcohol. Thus the only time I've been truly drunk was at Brandy and Josh's wedding reception - incidentally that was also one of the few times I've been out drinking and not had to drive home, thus another reason why it's the only time I've really been completely inebriated instead of just having one or two and calling it quits. A law school friend of mine recently tried to tell me that drunk driving wasn't that big a deal and that it's the fault of the local government for not having a good local transportation system. (Talking about Connecticut, not Ithaca.) My suggestion that perhaps then people should just not get that drunk didn't go over so well. ;-)

Anyway, the down side of Cabaret being such a party night was that we only had 5 people at our basketball game today, 3 guys and 2 gals. And the only reason the other female was there was because I called her and offered to drive her to the game if she would come. So w/o subs we played a not so great game, and we lost. It was a tougher team anyway than we've been playing, too - we really could have used the subs. Ah well. C'est la vie.

And now time to return to Contracts.

"I can't believe they made a sequel to that."

I have pretty low standards for movies. I don't expect much out of a movie. But this is horrible. There is exactly one other movie which has been this horrible, and that would be Serving Sara. I mean, okay, granted, when I saw that the made a sequel to "The Prince and Me" my immediate reaction was "You've got to be kidding me."

But I had bought the first one a month or so ago in the $5 bin at Walmart and had been surprised to discover that it was actually pretty good as far as its genre goes, and in fact a little more appealing than most of the teeny bopper romances because the main characters were graduating college and thus were a little more relatable. In fact I've watched it a lot of times in the past month - enough to make me wish I'd sprung for the extra $4 and bought the DVD. (I figured it was going to be not that great, and so was just buying it for the cost of renting it.) So in my attempt to make a quick decision and get home, I said what the heck, it's short and I don't have much time, and rented it.

Wow, was that a disappointment!!! And I mean, I wasn't expecting much - and it still disappointed! Sooooooooooo bad!!!!!! It wasn't even the same chick - Julia Stiles played the lead in the original, and she and Luke Malby actually had chemistry. They got the same guy but literally every other returning character was played by a different actor / actress. I didn't notice right away because they did a really good job on the DVD cover of making it look like Julia Stiles to someone who wasn't really looking particularly closely. I'm sure Stiles took one look at the script though and tossed it - sooooo bad!!! Horrible!!!! Not only cliche lines but utterly cliche, never done well even by expert gags, silly plot holes even for this genre, utterly unconvincing performances - oh sooo bad!!!

*sigh* So my evening was rather a waste. I went to the mall to see if I could find a winter coat on sale, but didn't find one to my satisfaction. My current coat has gotten really dingy and I thought perhaps I could pick one up cheap since it was the end of the season. So then I went to Wegman's for a big grocery trip - still not having had dinner, which perhaps explains why when I finally got to the video store at 9pm I didn't make the best decision. ;-)

About 1/2 an hour in I turned the movie off and put on my shoes to take it back to the video store and ask if they'd let me trade it in for Snow White Tale of Terror (an indy movie I caught one late Friday night last year and liked). But it was late and I figured they would tell me no, since it had been about an hour and a half since I rented the movie. So I just watched it, fastforwarding through some of the more obviously painful parts.

*GROAN* Never, ever, ever will I rent a straight - to - video sequel again . . .

"Show off."

We won our basketball game tonight, to bring us up to a 2-2 record. Whoohoo!!! The first game was really rough, because we had 9 guys and 4 girls there and we just couldn't get it together. But we've had a lot fewer guys every other game - in fact the last couple games, which we won, we only had 3-4 guys there. The women have been holding pretty steady at 3-4. And it's been the same core group showing up to every game, which really helps because we've got a sense now of who does what, how we work together, and so on.

It's been satisfying for me personally as well because for the first time ever in my entire basketball career I feel fairly satisfied with my ballhandling. In no small part that's because this is intramurals and the skill level of the defense isn't so high. And I still make mistakes, obviously. But overall I feel pretty good about it. Tonight there was one particularly sweet move, actually - one of my best passes ever. I was at the top of the key, and somehow the defense had all gotten pulled out wide, and Brian was just hanging out wide open looking for the ball under the hoop, and I dished in to him right over the shoulder of my defender (which was only possible because she was also short and didn't have her hand up in the proper defensive position . . . although I was still dribbling and picked it up quick for the pass, so theoretically she wasn't so out of position. If I'd been just standing looking for a pass she should have had her hands in my face.) Anyway, it really was a beautiful look (in basketball slang that means spotting the open person and dishing it to them) and would have been a beautiful shot, but Brian got a little crazy and tried this show off move that didn't work. That's okay though because we were well ahead at that point and he had the space to try something fun.

It's been really great playing with the basketball team - fun to play, especially now that we're really working together as a team now, nice to have the exercise, and nice to have people to talk basketball with. I don't keep up with the NBA or even the NCAA, not having a TV or time to watch it, so I can't chat up about who's making the playoffs or what not. But Brian, who's in my section and sits next to me in a few classes, used to play highschool ball too (which is not true of a lot of people on the team) and so sometimes we'll start having strategy conversations and so on. It's just fun to have people around who not only know the jargon but really know, first hand, the jargon . . . I can't think how else to say it. It's one thing to be an avid basketball fan and know a full court press when you see one, or a pick, or a back door cut, or whatever, and another thing to have been a player on a real team that knows how those are implemented, and work together, and so on. And it's cool because I'm realizing how much I actually know about the sport - not the players and the teams you see on TV, but actually playing basketball itself. I suppose that sounds stupid because I did play on school teams for seven years after all. But somehow it never really hit home to me until I found somebody at the law school to "talk the talk" about it.

Anyway, it's been a good day overall. Today was also my day to meet w/ Robert (as distinguished from Rob), my language partner. I'm feeling the Chinese come back, too, every time we talk a little bit more. And it was really an interesting conversation today - he pulled out his computer and I got all excited because the keyboard had all this Chinese characters on it, and he was explaining to me how it's used (Taiwan has a different system from the mainland - he's Taiwanese). And then I was explaining to him about QWERTY keyboards and that they're designed to slow down typers and some CS majors use a different arrangement and so on. All in chinese. So it was really a great feeling.

*sigh* unfortunately though I've been ignoring my Contracts reading, and I still have 13 pages of cases to slog through, which will take another hour and half probably, at least.
Ugg.

"I wouldn't presume to read your mind."

So I got called on in Contracts again today. Summers called on me just a couple weeks ago and really grilled Yosef and I - which is of course what's to be expected. I performed well that day, and I thought "alright, I'm done for the semester" because usually that's the way it works. Luckily I didn't start slacking off though, because yesterday he called on me at the beginning of class, and called on just me for the ENTIRE hour. (Well, in fairness, I volunteered to answer one of his first questions, but he doesn't generally stick w/ people who volunteer unless they haven't been called on before.) Usually he splits it between two people.

Anyway, without realizing it right away or intending to I kind of started getting an attitude with him half way through, when I realized it really was going to be just me for 50 minutes straight. The high point was, I believe, when Summers - who cowrote our text book - asked "Now why do you think Summers and Hillman put this in the casebook?" To which I responded "I wouldn't presume to read your mind." There was also the point where he asked "Now did this just seem really incredibly helpful, did this just make everything clear for you?" and the answer was clearly supposed to be yes, and I said "No not really." He tried to trip me up a couple times, saying the wrong answer in that tone that suggests it's the right answer, but w/o success. He said aloud. "You're not going to let me push you around, are you?" to which I responded "I'm trying not to," and he replied "You're doing a good job."

Anyway, "fiesty" comments aside (as my friend described my responses), I think I did pretty well. People were telling me in the halls "Good job today in contracts."

Honestly, as weird as it sounds, a good portion of the reason I was kind of annoyed with being called on is that it was a little embarrassing to do so well two times in a row being called on. I know that's an arrogant statement - but true, I feel pretty confident about. The last time people were also complementing me in the halls afterward. So I felt like a bit of a show-off the second time around and I didn't really like being put in that position - because it's not like I was going to answer poorly on purpose.

As for the fiesty comments, most of the time I was interjecting them to buy time or try to deflect his questioning when I didn't know the answer right off the bat. Anyway, that was that.

Eating Assorted Chocolates is my version of Russian Roulette

I'm rather picky about what kind of chocolates I don't like. I don't like ones with coconut in them, and I don't like the cream filled ones - doesn't matter what flavor of cream. So basically once I'm done eating the ones that are obviously nutty, I'm taking my chances dipping into them! Still, in this case wasting a few of them won't matter so much - Rob and I got it at Tops for 90 cents. It was marked as 1/2 off, for 4.50 . . . but it rung up as 90 cents!!! Yeesh. I have to wonder if that was some sort of error, but we asked the cashier about it and she was emphatic the machine did not err.

Speaking of money, I found a $5 bill on the floor in the lawschool hallway on Friday. How's that for good luck? Rob was laughing at me for being excited, since it is only $5, but after all, how often do you find a $1 bill on the ground much less a $5?? Normally it's a penny! I asked the people around if it was theirs and nobody claimed it, so taking my Property lesson from last week about finders rules to heart, I pocketed it.

Of course, that wasn't the really big good thing that happened Friday. The really big thing was that I got a job for the summer! I interviewed last week with the professor who teaches immigration law for a research position with him for the summer, and he offered it to me on Friday! I accepted late Friday night before he could revoke - taking my Contract lessons to heart. Although unfortunately since I paid attention in contracts (or rather since I was present in contracts, since this was a main point and it would be hard to not know it by this point) I also know that at the moment this is an unenforceable contract because it's too indefinite - we haven't settled on exact starting date or ending date, although he did say that he doesn't mind if I go to China for three weeks on Cornell's study abroad. One might argue that we also haven't settled my compensation, but not really - he has said several times "at the normal law school research rate", which I'm well aware of. It's a pretty good wage - about as much compensation as any first year will make this summer except the ones who managed to land firm jobs.

The position really seems ideally suited for me though. It's all internet research, and after the first couple weeks the professor said we'll communicate by email rather than meeting in person. So basically I can set my own hours, work in my PJ's, and spend 1/2 the summer in Missouri if I wanted to, since my parents finally got high speed connection this January. It's really cool - I don't know what you call it, but I didn't even realize you could get it . . . they can't get DSL or cable out where they live so the have a wireless internet signal . . . the tech guys said the main limitation was they had to be able to get a line of sight to the water tower in town because that's where the signal broadcasting thingy is.

And on top of all that, I'll still be able to go to China. Which I haven't been officially accepted but I've been assured by the person in charge of hiring decisions that I'll get in, so we'll see. I feel a little guilty about borrowing another few thousand dollars to go to China when it seems like I should be trying to reduce my debt - at least the credit card part of it - but my hefty tax refund this year will wipe out the part of the credit card debt that's still at a high rate and then some, and the rest of it is at a life of the balance 2% deal, which is better than my student loans for sure! So ya know. What's a few more thousand when I'm going to be $100K in debt by the time I'm done w/ law school anyway?

But yes, it's been a good week - topped off in fact by Rob and I going to see Curious George and having dinner at the boatyard for our Valentine celebration. It was a great movie by the way - very funny, and made me want to come right home and give my Curious George doll a big hug and a squeeze. His battery has long since died so he doesn't giggle like he used to, but he's still well loved. ;-)

"That's what he just said."

So here's a little lesson: don't go up to the professor after class with an "interesting" point you want to talk to him about when you haven't really been paying attention to lecture!!

The sad thing is, I knew I hadn't been paying attention to the first half of class, but I genuinely thought I had been paying enough attention the second half (in between writing paragraphs of my memo due Friday) that I caught what was going on in the class discussion. And right at the end the professor said something that interested me. So laddy-dahdy dah, up I go to the professor, and when I say "What about this?", he said "Yes that's what so-and so said and that's why I said . . . " etc. etc. He wasn't mean about it or anything and didn't call me out on not paying attention (not that he needed to at that point) but it was a bit embarrassing.

So I decided the only way to get myself out of it was to just keep talking, because I couldn't let him think that the only reason I had come up there was to make a point that had already been made when I wasn't listening. It's true this is a very Cecelia solution (to keep talking) but in this case I think it was the only plausible way to save anything. It worked reasonably well - at least enough to allow me to gracefully exit!

I'll blame it on my empty stomach. I'm hungry.

In Defense of the Law

Or at least of one aspect of it. The following quote in my criminal law book, apparently made by a juror to his fellow jury-members in a criminal case, put it well I think.

"The stiffness of the law is the product of a very serious idea; that the law should be exactly the same for everyone, regardless of who they are - that our 'rule of law' can never bend, because if it did it could be used to reach and get a particualr person, be used to satisfy paricular desires . . . Our legal system didn't end up this way by mistake; there have been decisions made to sacrifice the virtues of flexibility in exchange for absolute equality before the law."

I'm rather liking my Criminal Law class, despite the gruesomeness of the subject matter. (Murder, rape, assault, etc.) I suppose in part it's because I feel like this is something I have a handle on. It's not always simple to decide what is right and wrong, but at least here I'm dealing with familiar concepts, supplemented by legal doctrine explaining why things are the way they are, what the "reasonable doubt" standard really means, and so on.

But life is busy busy busy with interviews and my co-ed basketball team and work, so I'll leave it at that for tonight.

Only a true advocate . . .

Law school sometimes has its pleasures. For instances, judges with a good sense of ironic humor. One of the cases I had to read for Property this week involves the ownership of the baseball with which Bond set his record breaking 73rd home run.

Plaintiff Popov caught the ball, was tackled by a mob who "engaged in violent illegal behavior" and subsequently lost control of the ball. The defendant Hayashi - who plaintiff says bit another guy's leg, but the court says the video tape doesn't support that - picked up the loose ball, and when the crowd was under control, proudly displayed it to the videocamera. Popov saw Hayashi had the ball, expressed relief and grabbed for it. Mr. Hayashi pulled thee ball way.

At this point in the description of the case, the judge put the following footnote: "Defense counsel has attempted to characterize this encounter as one in which Popov congratulates Mr. Hayashi for getting the ball and offers him a high five. This is an argument that only a true advocate could embrace."

LOL!!! Okay, this is probably one of those times that my friend says "but people who aren't in lawschool just don't get the joke," but I was laughing for like two minutes straight at that last sentence. You can just see some old judge looking over the bench going "Nice try, I don't think so."

But yes, I just had to share.

My car looks like Shrek.

I know, that sounds crazy. But I was driving east, the sun low in the sky behind me, and the shadow my car cast looked a lot like Shrek - my side mirrors make perfect Shrek ears.

The drive back to Ithaca was remarkably smooth. I got started very late on Saturday - almost 3pm Central time - because I spent much of Friday and Saturday working on Rob's Valentine's Day gift. We don't generally do big gifts at Valentine's Day, but I had this great idea, couldn't get it ready for Christmas, and don't want to wait for the next gift occassion which is our anniversary in October. So I worked all Saturday morning and didn't get into Dayton until midnight eastern time.

But the driving itself was wonderfully stress free. I got into Apalachin Sunday night and Rob went to rub my shoulders and said "wow, you're surprisingly not tense" because after even a few hours of driving my shoulder muscles are usually rock solid.

My apartment is a mess from all the crud lugged back from Missouri with me, and the clutter in my room I didn't have time to clean before I left for Christmas, and the floors that need to be wiped. It's really beyond the point where even I can tolerate it. And yet, despite having only 3 hours of class this week, I am as usual managing to fill my time so that I feel like "I have no time." It's good though - much of it has been spent socializing. Over Christmas I inherited 4 teacups and saucers, a cream bowl and a sugar bowl of a matching china set from my Grandma Sander. They are really beautiful, and since El and I are both fond of tea (El being absolutely addicted to it I think) I invited her over Monday evening to inaugerate the new set. We talked for hours; it's been a long time since we had a chance to catch up since our schedules rarely mesh and when they do we are often going out on double dates or in groups. In addition to the tea set, I inherited my mom's tea kettle - she took my Grandma's tea kettle, which is twice the size. I brewed the chrysanthemum tea I bought in China four years ago; it was still flavorful.

Today was our first day of class, and I made some progress but not much on my writing assignments. I'm not worried though; it shouldn't be hard to get it done - it's a rewrite and I got an excellent grade on the first draft so rewriting won't be so bad. I socialized a lot today too, standing around the halls catching up with classmates, which was nice - I kind of realized "wow, these friends are closer friends then I thought" when I came back and realized I was very glad to see them again instead of being just mildly pleased. Tonight I went bowling at a CLSA sponsored event, and hung out with a few friends from my section that I haven't gotten a lot of chance to really hang out with, to be honest - we tend to be at the same group functions, and they're interesting people, but I haven't really gotten to know them in depth. So that was good.

And I had extra long workouts in the gym yesterday and today, and I plan on doing it again tomorrow afternoon. I'm really set on losing some weight for real this semester. I'd like to not be embarrassed in a swimsuit. That's probably too hefty a goal for the four months I'll have here, but when I've been on a real workout, I've managed to shave ten pounds in three months or so, so I figure that's a realistic goal. The trick is finding time to keep up w/ the gym.

Anyway, getting to bed at a reasonable hour is another vague goal, less definite than the gym thing, and it's already 12:35, so it's bedtime.

"You have an interesting resume."

Generally speaking, I wouldn't be too thrilled if somebody used the adjective "interesting" in the manner above, since it's often a word that means "I don't know what bad thing to say about it" or "I'm being too polite to say this sucks" so I was kind of concerned the first time I got the above in response to a job application. But it was repeated a few times this week as I was talking with attorneys at different firms, and I think at least most of them actually meant it in a positive way.

I'd managed to delay any concern about the whole job search thing through Christmas, but the day after Christmas it hit with a vengeance, and basically on a whim I spent that entire Monday, well into the evening, and all of the next day as well, reading up on the web about different firms (on dial-up, at that point), writing cover letters and resumes, printing out writing samples, and sending them out. They went out on Tuesday, and to my amazement, on Thursday and Friday I got four responses wanting to set up interviews; on the following Tuesday I got a fifth response. I didn't want to take time away from Rob's visit to interview, so I set them all up for this week. Five interviews in 3 days in St. Louis, then Kansas City, then St. Louis again. Each "interview" was actually 4-5 interviews with different attorneys, so all told I met with ~18 people for a total actual interview time of about 11 hours in 3 days. And I was driving 5 hours each day. UGG!!

So much for the statistics. To sum it up, I have one job offer, two interviews that I felt fairly good about, one that was so-so, and one that was pretty bad. As a sampling of the bad interview, I screwed up the name of the firm and said "Spencer Fane" when I was interviewing at Polsinelli - twice. I caught myself right away and corrected and apologized, but it kind of flustered me. Anyway, the job offer is sort of a mixed bag of good and bad. The good side is it is with a 2 person immigration firm in St. Louis and it sounds like I would be getting incredible experience, since they plan on throwing me right in to writing pleadings and even client contact, if I show the aptitude. The bad side is that it would be unpaid. Mitigating that, Cornell has grants for public interest work; the money is guaranteed as long as you are with a qualifying entity. It's about a quarter of what I would get paid at a larger firm, but it's work I'm interested in. On the other hand, if I landed one of the large firm jobs (the other four interviews) I would be getting about $15-16K for 10 weeks work, which would make a HUGE dent in my credit card bills (especially if I was living with family in St. Louis rent free) . And getting rid of some or all of the credit card debt would mean it would be easier for me to take a public interest job the following summer.

But in the end, I'm not sure how it's all going to work out. I may not get offers from any of these firms; they have very limited 1L spots and are going to be cautious about extending one of them to somebody who has lived out east for 6 years because they want somebody who is going to return to Missouri after graduation.

In fact, for some reason I seem to be having a much more "let it be" attitude toward this job search. I applied to the FBI in D.C. and applied for an internship in Japan; after applying I realized there are some reasons like my sister Andrea being pregnant and due in July and a friend maybe getting married this summer that would make it good for me to be back in MO this summer. But I put a good faith effort into both FBI and Japan and got turned down for both. I wasn't too disappointed - it kind of seemed like it wasn't meant to be, given the afore mentioned reasons for being in MO. For some reason, throughout the application and interview process of the past couple weeks, I've had a very strong sense that this is something to be left in the hands of God, as my mother would say. I'm putting forth my best faith effort to get all these jobs - I'm even writing thank you notes for pete's sakes - and I have this strong sense of trust that when it comes time I'll see my way clearly, and it won't because I only actually ever had one option.

That was the thing that surprised me when I was writing my cover letters. I've always had to BS them before and because I felt like I had nothing concrete to offer but for the first time ever I felt like the skills I have were directly applicable to the job I was applying for, and I could give concrete examples of how I acquired and used them. And it wasn't just stuff from law school by any means, although that was the clinch pin. Going all the way back to my internship in D.C. it seems like all this stuff I've been doing has been preparing me for this.

And on top of that, I got a 3.7 GPA for my first semester of law school. So all told, while I'm not complacent, I'm feeling like I'm on the right track in my life.

Cecelia and her Anti-Dirty-Hippy Lover

"That's how I'm addressing your Christmas card next year - Cecelia and the Dirty Hippy Hater."
~Brandy, laughing at Rob's comment (and the title above was her doing too incidentally)

So this post had to get split into two pieces, since it was so long. This is the personal bit about Rob's visit, and I'll post the career bit about job interviews tomorrow.

Rob came out to visit for a week, and it was a really really great visit, except for not getting enough quality us time. But that wasn't really the purpose of the visit and we both knew it so it was no big deal. He came in the afternoon of the 31st, and we had lunch at my aunt's, dinner with Sister #2 and family, which was very enjoyable, and then went to Brandy and Josh's New Years party. They had a Yankee Swap at the party, although they didn't call it that, where everybody brings a small gift and you pick one from the middle and steal from each other and so on. Rob ended up with a set of Orange County Chopper mugs which he thought was awesome, and I ended up w/ the book Emma, which I thought was great. Rob had been up since 4am Central time, but he gamely agreed to stick it out until Midnight, and performed quite well at Darts. He was up for 20+ hours that day! We stayed at my sister's place that night, had a leisurely morning, and then went to my extended family gathering (Dad's side) which he described as "overwhelming." If he thinks my Dad's family is overwhelming, I'm not sure how he'll survive a full Luth clan gathering! (Mom's side, and it's about 4 times as big.) Still I think he made a fairly good impression, at least on my godfather.

Monday we went to Kansas City with my Mom and Dad and visited the Arabia Steamboat museum, which displayed the cargo of a sunken steamboat five regular joes dug up and turned into a museum. It was pretty interesting, particularly the displays showing how steam engines turned the great paddle wheels. Rob really seemed to enjoy all the big mechanical parts and explained to me how it all worked, which I found interesting too. Then we had dinner w/ Sister #1 and family and a couple cousins that live in the area. While I was busy playing ball w/ my nephew in the kitchen Rob was having very adult conversation with my father and brother-in-law about taxes, which I found quite impressive. Rob really was so much more talkative this trip than he has been in the past when meeting my friends. It seems like he's becoming less shy, actually. Tuesday it was off to St. Louis to see sister #3,and my car broke down and had to have a $600 repair job, which the dealer got done in under 3 hours from the time I dropped the car off until time I had the keys back in my hand - pretty amazing. We stayed at my aunt's and the next day visited the Anheiser Bush Brewery and headed back to Columbia to have dinner w/ a bunch of my highschool friends, which was also just a lot of fun. Rob had Brandy cracking up laughing a lot of the night, which I found to be a particularly good sign, because Brandy tends to expect a lot out of guys that date her friends, and also her political views are the most opposite of Rob's. So if he's up to snuff w/ the toughest critic . . . It was nice to see him blending in so well to the group. Thursday we visited my Grandma, and Dad showed Rob around the farm a bit and explained to him all the different machinary and even let him drive the tractor. That evening we celebrated my birthday early. The next day I drove back to St. Louis (for the third time in a week) to take him to the airport, but we went by the Arch first so he could take some pictures. And that was the whirlwind week.

It's odd how used to being near each other Rob and I have gotten; well not odd, just . . . noticeable. We were only apart for a week, then together a whole week, and we'll be apart for another week before I'm back in Ithaca. NOt really that much separation. But both of us were commenting on how we miss each other - not desperately miserably or anything, it is only temporary and of short duration - but still . . . it will be really nice to be back close together. It was so good though to have him here, fitting so well with this part of my life. It felt very natural. I think this is part of what has been missing for me. We spend so much time in my "other" life, and with his family, in the world where he grew up . . . and it's my world too, now. I realized that more than ever this time home, as I find that I am very slowly, little by little, beginning to identify myself as a "New Yorker" of some sort. I have lived there for the better part of 6 years now - a quarter of my life, and almost all of my adult life. But even though that's my present and my future, at least my immediate future, my Missouri life will always be a big part of me, and everything feels more right when he comes back to share it with me, even for just a bit.