divine angst

I am an unabashed Mac fan. Let there be no doubt—I love me some Apple computers.

BUT, in the last two days, I’ve been called into two meetings with sales reps from different companies who both had one of those nifty swiveling-monitor tablet notebook PCs. And let me tell you, those things are cool. Really, really cool.

Mind you, I didn’t USE them and I didn’t even get to see how the sales reps were using them, aside from watching them tap-tap-tap on the screen with the nifty pen-thing. But the form factor is undeniably cool.

Come on, Steve Jobs, give us some tablet love. What could be cooler than a 12-inch aluminum PowerBook with a swiveling, tablet monitor? Drool.

…I am reminded that I have no patience. It’s not like this is something I DON’T know, it’s just that I try to forget it in my quest to think of myself as the perfect wife, employee, and friend. I am never impatient! I am always fun and cheerful! I work consistently and accurately without making mistakes and never take Internet breaks!

Obviously, I am deluded. This week at least, I am an impatient, procrastinating curmudgeon. And will likely continue to be such for a while. At least through the weekend. And the world will just have to deal with it.

My last letter, the one written by my current boss, will be sent out tomorrow. (I didn’t even have to remind him of the deadline! He’s good…)

So now I can stop fretting about whether or not the letters will be sent and start tearing my hair out over how long I know LSAC is going to take to process them.

I have until, approximately, November 26 to continue to work on my apps through LSAC on the Web. This is because, stupidly, you can only access the online system for 30 days after registering for it. I don’t really understand that system. What I think will probably happen in my case is that I will end up transmitting electronically four or five of my apps; I’ll print the others and send them by mail. Sigh. I wonder if it wouldn’t be quicker, in some ways, for me to just send them all by mail.

Heidi responds to an argument about gay marriage by expanding the definition of family.

I have to agree with Heidi that families are more, much more, than mom and pop and sibs. I have a large, very large, extended family and we all grew up together, going to the same schools—and the same schools our parents went to—and being each other’s best friends. It’s wonderful and really quite special to have that sort of built-in support system.

The problem is that a lot of people don’t have that experience anymore. Mr. Angst grew up far away from his extended family and doesn’t have the same perspective on cousins, aunts, and uncles that I do. More and more people now are only connected to their immediate family, to the two or three or four people in their house. This is something I mourn—I think there was a greater sense of community and continuity when people regularly stayed where they grew up. We’re such a mobile nation now; things are much different than they were even 50 years ago.

So I’ll add to Heidi’s discussion of the bigger nature of family by suggesting that communities can also provide a broadened perspective. Being involved with the people you live and work around develops that sense of intereconnectednes. It also provides a way for people to meet and get to know stable, healthy, same-sex-parented families. (Aren’t people saying that’s one of the reasons various groups give for the 11 amendments that passed last week—that people “don’t know any gay families”—as if “families” can be “gay”?)

So, just adding another layer of discussion.

I managed to stay in pretty good shape after my wedding early this year. I maintained my weight and ate healthy foods and exercised regularly.

But ever since I decided to go to law school, my physical condition has deteriorated. I have gained some pounds, a small number but a big impact on my short body; I have lapsed into eating awful, fattening foods; and I have almost completely stopped going to the gym. For a few weeks before the LSAT, I got my act together and at least worked out. But I didn’t change my eating habits, and I didn’t lose any weight.

I’ve looked at myself and realized it’s time, once again, for drastic measures. It’s time, in other words, to get organized.

A few years ago, I discovered that the quickest way for me to pay attention to my physical wellbeing was to hyperfocus on it. It’s the only way I can monitor myself. I have to keep a food diary and count calories, I have to keep an exercise log, and I have to do it every day. In that vein, I bought a piece of shareware for my Palm Pilot that does all of it for me. (It was cheap.)

The software is called Cheater and it makes me feel like a completely anal retentive, obsessive-compulsive, food-focused freak while using it. But it’s a good thing. It gives positive feedback! It gives negative feedback! It’s exportable! (I do not export anything from it, because that would be more anal retentive and obsessive compulsive than even I am comfortable with.)

Every time I look at my body and see that I’ve gained some weight or gotten flabby, I go back to Cheater. I suppose being so conscious of what I put in my mouth is mildly unheathly—and food issues are not unknown in my family, mostly on the too-much-food side of things. But more unhealthy would be remaining in denial. So I am back on the calorie-counting wagon.

This may make me grouchy in the coming weeks. But I can’t be any grouchier than I already am over my expanding ass and belly. I just wish I’d done this a month ago. Now I have to be anal retentive and obsessive-compulsive during Thanksgiving. Pooh.

Remember when I told you that my iPod battery was dying?

Well today, I took my dying Precious to the local Apple store so I could take advantage of my warranty period and get a new one. I figured I’d let the store send it in for me so I could be sure that it got there safely.

Oh boy howdy! Not only did they not charge me a penny (I thought I might have to pay $30 for, essentially, shipping), they handed me a shiny, clean, refurbished iPod on the spot.

Time without iPod: 0 minutes.

Currently: charging new iPod in preparation for importing all my music back on to it.

I won’t bitch about Apple’s corporate practices for a good month now. That’s how happy I am.

Another letter writer has informed me, ever so graciously, that her recommendation is IN THE MAIL!

All these people, beating my deadline! It’s marvelous!

Well, I was doing pretty well with not fretting or stressing about my applications not being in yet. Or, at least, I thought I was doing well with that. But considering Mr. Angst has asked me every day for the last three days what’s wrong with me, I think I should reevaluate my stress level.

Honestly, I’m freaked out. I wouldn’t be—or I say I wouldn’t be—if my LSAT score had been 2 points higher. I wouldn’t be if LSAC were processing letters of recommendation quickly. In other words, I wouldn’t be freaked out if I weren’t so worried that my LSAT schore and application delay were going to kill my chances of getting into the schools I want to go to.

Tonight I talked to my best friend for a while, and explained the whole stupid letter of recommendation holdup on my applications and how I was truly worried that all this waiting would completely destroy my getting into my top schools. And she said, “You know what they say about the guy who graduates at the bottom of his law school class? They say he has a law degree. You’ll be fine no matter where you go.”

And I know she’s right. But I am so nervous right now! Nervous that I won’t get into a good school, nervous that the schools I get into won’t be good enough for me to actually enter legal academia. And it’s getting me down. I need to snap out of it and I don’t really know how right now. (It doesn’t help that I stepped on the scale today and realized that the yoga classes I haven’t been going to and the gym trips I’ve been skipping have not been good for me.)

So I’m worried-nervous-fretful and feel fat. Basically, I’m down.

A year ago, Mr. Angst and I bought a car. A newish car—of the certified pre-owned species. It’s a good car, reliable and fairly cushy. It’s a near-luxury vehicle.

Today, Mr. Angst called me to say that our transmission was shot. The car—our beautiful car!—was bucking and wheezing. Any attempt to exceed 25 mph resulted in RPMs over 5000.

Urk.

This is why I don’t like cars. They fail. Even the best cars fail. I have a small economy car for myself and it is more than enough auto for me. Because it was cheap—and is now paid for—I don’t worry as much about it failing. It was cheap! It drinks cheap gas!

But the nice car, the car we spent three months looking for, the car we drove 200 miles to buy so we could get the best deal? That car has failed.

I am bothered by the immediate depreciation of an automobile. Dealership requirements—spend hundreds of dollars every 15,000 miles just to keep your warranty valid—vex me. Gas is expensive, and more expensive on a nicer car, and this infuriates me.

For a time, I rode the bus to work every day. I lived half a block from the stop and the bus took me directly outside my building. It was delightful. I got lots of reading done on the bus; I could go home for lunch because the round trip only took 25 minutes. I saved money, used my legs, and never had to scavenge for a parking space.

But I don’t live in that neighborhood anymore. Bus service to our current area is ridiculously scant, particularly for a neighborhood that is in the middle of our city. And my current job is not in a central location, as the last one was. So I have to drive. And I hate it.

The failing car is being repaired—for free, since there is, apparently, a known problem with transmissions on that make and model. And we have a cute, sporty loaner. But I’d much rather take a bus or a train.

Why, oh why, weren’t drops the treatment of choice for my lazy eyes? Three years of elementary school with a patch was no fun, no fun at all.

Funnily, my eyes still have a tendency to cross when I am tired. This really freaks out my husband. I can also move my eyes sort of independently of one another; that also makes his skin crawl. It’s a fun party trick.

My #1 letter writer just emailed me to say….he’s done! It will go out in the mail tomorrow!

Please, gods of LSAC, be good to me and process it QUICKLY!

Sigh. I feel a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

I started this blog as a personal exercise. I needed a place to hash out all the conflicting emotions I was having about my (then) suddenly burning desire to go to law school. For as long as I can remember, when I felt confused, I wrote about it. I have boxes of old journals from high school and earlier; I have archived electronic journals I kept in college. I have an old blog that I kept for a few months when blogging was brand new; I have another, personal blog, where I post longer bits, more personal bits, things that are not necessarily related to law school.

And see, that’s where things start getting confusing. This blog was intended to be just about law school. I wanted a place where I’d post my thoughts and reactions to LSAT study, application hassles, rejections and acceptances, and my eventual decision-making process. But as it’s grown and developed, this blog has become more personal, a place where I post not just my law school thoughts, but also my random musings, reactions to horoscopes, weekend adventures, and other experiences. I don’t know that I like that. It’s not that I dislike the disclosure of it all, although I am quite wary of broadcasting my identity on the internet. It just doesn’t feel right somehow.

I have started sharing more and more—but I am ever-conscious of how thinly veiled my identity really is. So I censor myself rather readily to keep what anonymity I have. This doesn’t feel good to me, but I almost can’t help it! Jeremy says,

I also think there’s a difference between an anonymous blog and a non-anonymous one. The anonymous ones, to me, are like people are hiding something to begin with — that if it’s found, people will assume it was anonymous for a reason.

I think there’s a lot of validity to that. There are things I don’t say because I am afraid of being “found out,” as it were. I’m anonymous, but not anonymous enough.

Right now, I’m contemplating becoming completely un-anonymous. There seems to be some freedom in that. I’d curtail my personal commentary somewhat, but that might force me to restrict those kinds of writings to a more appropriate venue. I just don’t know. I’d like some thoughts on it, though—anonymous bloggers, what benefit do you get from being anonymous? And those of you who are fully outed, as it were—do you restrict yourself because you are easier to find?

I heard (finally) from a woman I know who volunteered to write me a letter of recommendation for one of my schools that she has a connection with. I’d tried to reach her a few weeks ago and when I hadn’t gotten a response, figured the offer wasn’t valid or she was too busy. Turns out, she was just having email problems. She said she’s still willing to write the letter. I asked her how much time she’d need….that’s the critical thing, you know.

So that’s a happy for today.

So a friend of mine from college graduated from law school in May and took the bar in this, our home, state.

Bar results are out, and I don’t see her name. So I think she didn’t pass the bar.

What is the best response? We don’t hang out a lot, but we have happy hour every month or so. Since I’m getting my information from a website, I don’t feel comfortable just calling her up and saying, “Oh my God! You failed the bar! I’m so sorry, let’s go get drunk!” But, likewise, calling her up and saying, “Hey, let’s get a drink tomorrow!” seems phony, not owning up to why I’m calling her.

What would you prefer, dear reader(s)? The random call or the pity call? Or some version in between?

Friday
Barbecue! Lots and lots of barbecue. And then beer. All good things.

Saturday
One of the best football games I have ever been to. The crowd was going CRAZY! Absolutely amazing.

Also: ran into a friend whose wife is a 1L. He says he’s proud of her because she’s really doing this law school thing and enjoying it. She does, however, “study all the time.” I’m going to assume when he says “study” he means “read.” I’ve always been mystified by the varied uses of the word “study” in a school context. To me, studying is review—going over material in preparation for an exam. Reading is preparing for class. Of course, there’s also writing and research, but those aren’t studying either. Maybe this is just me. How do you think of the word “study”? Is it an exam-specific thing or do you study all the time? Maybe she is studying—she’s done the reading, the writing, and the research, and she’s reviewing it all in case she gets called on in class. Or maybe he means that she’s already working on her outlines. I don’t know. Any thoughts?

Sunday
Beautiful music in church—a cool, bizarre, big piece by Benjamin Britten, and then a lovely motet by Stanford. Followed up by buttermilk pancakes, made by yours truly. And then, because I was in a cooking mood and I have a new food processor, I made red sauce from a new recipe (note to self: reduce amount of sugar, because sauce was a little sweet), then a spaghetti bake (browned ground sirloin folded into red sauce, tossed with spaghetti and layered, like a lasagna, with shredded mozarella). Yum.

And now it’s a new week. Letters of recommendation will hopefully be mailed on Friday. Until then, it’s life as usual.

Kristine’s Daily Virgo Forecast

Quickie: When you speak, everyone listens. Use your power wisely.

Well, my apps are pretty much ready to go, except my resumé is not quite done. I am missing one little bitty piece of information that I really do want to include—it’s just a small detail that I can’t quite remember—and I have to wait for a reply to an email I sent before I’ll have that info.

Meh.

If (oh hope, oh hope) I get that email tomorrow, I can get some of my apps sent out before the weekend. That means I’ll be able to relax and enjoy myself. We have a houseguest coming and there’s a football game, and it’s finally football weather…I can’t wait for it to be the weekend!!!

My iPod has decided that, today, it will play all the rap I have on it, in a row. (She is set to shuffle songs.) Rap is probably about 1.5% of the music collection on my iPod (code name: Precious), yet I think I have listened to all of it in the last few hours.

If it’s not rap, it’s synthpop.

Seriously, what’s going on here? And where is all my 80’s music? God knows I could use some of that right now.

All of my recommenders now have the same deadline. Next Friday, November 12. I hear rumors on the evil boards that LSAC has been taking WEEKS to process letters. I hope this will not be the case for mine. Theoretically, they’ll all arrive at the same time, since they’re all coming from the same city, and I won’t have to worry about which letters get sent to schools first or second or third.

Meanwhile, I obviously did NO work on my apps on Tuesday night. Not only was it election night, but Mr. Angst also skipped class that night, so we spent some rare weeknight time together. A much better way to spend the evening than hunched over a monitor, I’ll tell you what.

But tonight…well, tonight I’m pretty sure he won’t skip class again. That will leave me with a choice between watching Joey (snort) or doing some actual work. I think I’ll polish up my apps and try to send off my top choices.

It’ll feel good to actually be a law school applicant. Right now, I kind of feel like I did in ninth grade when I had told everyone in eight grade we were moving to another city, and then we didn’t and I showed up on that first day of high school and everyone looked at me like I’d just been telling tales and hadn’t followed through. (Not like fourteen-year-old me could have followed through on such a thing, but, hey, fourteen-year olds aren’t always rational.)

The switch from Daylight Savings (or is it TO Daylight Savings? I never can remember) has my circadian rhythms all off.

Firstly, I am waking up earlier because of the light, no matter how late I go to bed. Last night, for instance, I was up until about midnight, when the networks called Ohio. Yet I still was stirring awake by about 7 am—which, by the way, is a full half-hour earlier than I usually get up.

And now it’s the end of the day, and I am getting ready to leave, and the growing darkness outside has me confused, too. It’s so dark! Am I in the office too late? Did I lose track of time? What’s going on?

My undergrad was located about 30 miles west of the time zone shift from Eastern to Central time. When Daylight Savings changed in the fall there, it was so much worse than it is here (several hundred miles farther west). There, I’d go into choir rehearsal around 5 and it would be dusk; by 6:15 when I’d be heading to dinner, it would be pitch black. So I really shouldn’t be complaining too much, here in the heart of Central time.

But I am. I don’t like being awoken before my alarm goes off by the light; I don’t like feeling the day is over when I am just leaving work. I don’t like it. The only good thing that comes with the time change is the promise of cooler weather. (I am actually wearing my favorite sweater today…yay!)

Not that my bitching is going to change anything. It’s just one of those things that gets me at 5:20 in the afternoon when I still have choir rehearsal. Some things never seem to change.

I am pleased to see that Kerry has called Bush to concede. Not because I am happy he lost, but because to drag this thing out longer, á la 2000, would have been a very bad decision. The classy, and appropriate choice, is to concede in the face of (a) the popular vote and (b) statistically overwhelming evidence that Ohio will go to Bush.

That being said, a commentary:

I am not surprised Bush won. I think it would have been unusual to vote out an incumbent president in wartime. I’ve thought that all along.

I am surprised, however, at the reasons the pollsters are giving for Bush’s win. I assumed people would vote him back in on the basis of the war. But morality—a vague, ambiguous term at best—seems to have been the driving issue for most of middle America. And that makes me sad.

What did they see in Kerry that was amoral or immoral? Was it the gay marriage thing? Even Bush said in recent days that he felt civil unions shouldn’t be made illegal. Was it the faith thing—that Bush has the appearance of a solid evangelical while Kerry has the appearance of a lapsed Catholic?

I suppose it doesn’t really matter what moral issue mattered to those voters in middle America. Fact is, 11 states voted to outlaw gay marriage yesterday. Fact is, an overwhelming number of Americans voted yesterday for a number of candidates and issues that are discriminatory. Fact is, we can plan on the next few years being a rather ugly, litigious period in the fight for rights for all people. And that makes me sad. It makes me sadder than the prospect of living through another Cold War-type era, one of constant conflict with the rest of the world (if not outright pitched warfare).

It’s hard being an adult, knowing that your point of view, no matter how rational and moral and fair is opposed by a majority of your fellow countrypersons. It’s hard to look forward over the next four years and wonder how much worse it will get.

But we can always remember to look beyond those four years, beyond the present. We will vote for another president. We will vote for Senators and Congressmen again; we will see our world continue to change. And all that we can hope is that we are all—our side and theirs—strong enough to continue to be rational, and moral, and fair.

After realizing I needed my exact class rank, and realizing that it was not noted on my transcript, I had to have my alma mater send me that information. It arrived last night.

I am pleased to say that my rank, percentage-wise, was better than I had thought, though the actual number was one (1) place lower. In other words, I almost had it right. (This is pretty good, considering I calculated my rank based solely on how many other people received a certain GPA distinction in my class, and put myself at the bottom of that number.)

So tonight I think I’ll go back in and polish up those applications, tweak the information where necessary, and perhaps (!) send off my top choice apps. No reason not to, right? Still need to check that letter of recommendation thing, to make sure I can put a “hold” on letters that I don’t want to have sent first.

My roommate from my last election party has taken up where I did (and could) not. Viewing party! Glad someone is brave enough to invite the broo-ha-ha into her home.

Note: If this post shows up twice, it’s not my fault.

Good:
The cool weather has finally arrived. I am actually wearing a sweater today.

Bad:
My blowdryer decided this morning that it would not blow if the barrel was not pointing up. It works to about 15° off the horizontal, but any farther than that and it craps out. This will make drying the top of my head awkward.

Good:
Last night’s dinner was lovely—mushroom risotto, baked pork chops with a balsamic pan sauce, and spinach salad with Don’s Florida Salad Dressing. I added a pinch of dill and some oregano, too, just because. We also enjoyed a bottle of our honeymoon wine.

Bad:
My iPod battery has been acting funky, taking a full charge and then resetting itself because it thinks it doesn’t have any charge. This is nervewracking. I bought it in February, so I still have a few months of warranty. I really don’t want to send the thing in for replacing, though. I seem to be able to avoid problems if I (a) listen to it every day and (b) charge it up every night. Listening and charging simultaneously, which I tend to do at work, appears to only increase the likelihood of problems.

Also:
Everybody who hasn’t voted needs to drop what they are doing right now and make their way to their polling place. Voting matters. Really.

I am ready for the election to be over.

Like many others in the blogosphere (and blawgosphere), I hope this election is cut-and-dried. I hope there are no recounts, that the Supremes don’t need to get involved, and that we can all go to bed tomorrow night knowing who will be President for the next four years.

Last time around, I had an election party. A last-minute election party, in fact. I sent an email out around 3:00, and about 40 people showed up to my apartment, food and drink in tow. We had a marvelous time. I did not have cable, so we watched the network coverage, heated up DiGiorno’s pizza, baked Brie, and monitored what other coverage there was via a dial-up connection on an ancient ThinkPad.

We drank and ate and what I remember most was a delightful sense of camaraderie. Most of us had voted for the first time in that election—some for the second time, depending on whether or not they’d been living out of state in college. We were excited and having a good time. No one argued about who should win, and quite a few of us laughed about voting for Nader, since we weren’t living in a contested state.

When it became clear that the election results would probably not be official until that Wednesday, the party began to simmer down. People trickled out, all in good spirits.

I remember stumbling to bed around midnight, when everyone but the future Mr. Angst and another friend of ours had left. The other friend was too drunk to drive at that point, so Mr. Angst hung out with him until he sobered up a bit. Mr. Angst came crawling into bed around 2 am. I mumbled, “Who won?” and he said, “Bush.” I probably said something like, “Oh. Well, damn. Good night.”

But the next morning, everything had changed. Bush hadn’t won, at least not yet, and national elections were about to change forever.

I asked Mr. Angst a few weeks ago if we should have an election party this year, since the last one was so successful. His answer was an emphatic, “No.” And I understand why. I’m an eternal optimist; I would hope that our friends would show up and we’d behave just like we did four years ago. We’d eat pizza and drink wine, laugh at the pundits and maniacally hit Refresh on the laptop. Mr. Angst is more realistic, though. That sense of camaraderie would never materialize, replaced this time with some paranoia, cynicism, and probably a little bit of shouting. Politics are no longer polite conversation.

It makes me a bit sad, in fact. But everyone takes everything more seriously now that we know what can happen. I wish we could take ourselves more lightly this year, but that seems unlikely.

So my hope is for an uncontested election. I know who I voted for, and I know that Mr. Angst voted for someone else. But I’m less concerned about whether his candidate or mine wins. I mostly fear for what happens on Wednedsay.