divine angst

Um, OK, guys, the next time I’m going to be out of town for four days and will find myself unexpectedly without internet access, can you all please not post? At all? I’m sitting on my couch dying to go to bed, but I still have to dig through, like 300 more posts, and I’d like to get some sleep but I’m so behind, and damn you Larry and E. Spat and E. McPan, and THL, and Amber because I’m also digging through the 800 pages of clothes on the candy bar doll website?

*help*

OK, four days in the Windy Second City are done and we are home, no worse for the wear.

I honestly meant to post from Chi-town, but our hotel room didn’t have wireless access! Or, rather, it was supposed to have access, but we were too far down the hall for the signal to reach us.

So I have lots of updates coming soon:

• My first book review of the 50 Book Challenge. (Shortly forthcoming, my second book review, which is proving a much more enjoyable and therefore faster read.)
• Campus Reviews part III and IV
• A report on my first, real, live in-person blogger meet!
• Other honorable mentions, many of which actually have something to do with law school!

So, you’re all going to get a readful this week. Fewer post of mindless filler and more meaty substance.

LawMom has been accepted to law school!

She’s joined the ranks of 1Ls-to-be.

Next up: stag and Sui Generis. Send them law-school-acceptance vibes and speedy-mail wishes

I have managed to go nearly 18 months without getting sick. Oh, I’ve had some allergy issues in that time—sniffling and sneezing from molds and whatnot—but I haven’t had a real, live, green-snot-blowing cold in forever.

Until now.

Monday night, after Mr. Angst and I had downed a $40 bottle of Veuve, I felt my throat start to get a little itchy and sore. I figured it was the champagne and thought nothing of it. Yesterday morning, though, it was worse, and I had one clogged nostril. By the end of the day yesterday, I was in the throes of a full-blown cold, sans only the coughing. (That will come next week, I’m sure.)

I may jinx myself by saying this, but I just don’t get sick very often! I’ve never had the flu, strep throat, or mono; I get max one cold a year, and the most regular illness I ever had was chronic laryngitis in college. So I hate being sick.

And now I’m sick right before we’re to head to cold, snowy Chicago. I am not pleased.

(I’m not the only one, apparently—Denise has a cold, too. Denise, I tried to comment but TypePad is acting up, so I’ll just share my advice here: DayQuil. It is the gift of the gods to sick people who can’t stay in bed all day.)

I’m hoping I nip this sucker in the bud tonight or tomorrow. Being sick for our anniversary trip would be awful.

I am saddened to see that Scrubs, the only sitcom I bother watching, actually allowed Colin Farrell to guest on tonight’s show. Even worse, they not only allowed but actually appear to have encouraged him to babble on in his ridiculously exaggerated Irish brogue.

Meh. I can’t stand Colin Farrell.

take the WHAT INTENTIONAL TORT ARE YOU test.

and go to mewing.net. because law school made laura do this.

This makes me sort of sad.

via Heidi

When the Steve Miller Band sings in The Joker, “Some people call me Maurice,” what do they mean?

…that I only applied to five schools.

With all the pre-law surfing I do, I keep running into blogs or discussion board posts by people who have applied to loads of schools. (”Loads” is a technical term referring to an amount greater than fourteen. Or thereabouts.)

I admit that my list had thirteen schools on it at one point, when we were considering Boston and Raleigh as possible locations. Once those two extra cities were ruled out, I crossed off six schools. Once I got into GW, I removed a safety school in DC; ditto for Northwestern in Chicago. If my application process were more “normal,” I could see myself going nuts and applying everywhere; thankfully, the geographic restrictions on us helped me not to get caught up in the frenzy and apply to more schools than I needed to.

I’ve mentioned this before, I think, but I only applied to three schools for undergrad (well, four if you count the school that seems to have thrown my application away). One of those was the big state school that offered me beaucoups of scholarship money, and the other two were the schools I actually wanted to go to. (Well, one of those was the school I actually wanted to go to; the other was similar in size and reputation, and close to home.)

And I was happy with those choices. I was glad that I didn’t sit around for months waiting for all my acceptances to trickle in and I was thrilled to apply to two schools that I was pretty sure I’d get into and that I’d be happy attending.

I guess that’s the kind of person I am—I don’t tend to cast a wide net when I’m looking for fish, hoping to catch anything. I’d rather focus on one pool where I know there are yummy fish I want to eat. This is true in most of my life. For instance, when I’m looking for a new job (which I’ve done a few times), I don’t tend to blanket the city with my resume. I do a lot of research and apply to jobs that I think I’ll enjoy, not just jobs that pay more. Quality of life is important to me, and that usually means I have to narrow the field.

I’m glad my law school application process ended up being narrow: I’m less stressed than I might have been otherwise, and I’m not stretching myself too thin in my where-to-go research. Juggling the pros and cons of two cities and four schools is just about enough for me. The next few months look to be exciting instead of frustrating, manageable instead of manic, and I’m glad for that.

A: Very.

One year ago today, I married Mr. Angst. In celebration, we had a special meal, created by yours truly: wine and chili oil marinated salmon, egg noodles with a beurre blanc sauce, asparagus, and spinach salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

Then, we did the least (or close to least) practical thing two future graduate students should do: we went to Best Buy and bought an HDTV. OK, to be fair, we’ve been saving for this purchase and it was on sale (pre-Super Bowl and all) so it wasn’t too impractical. And it’s pretty damn exciting—we’re getting a new TV! It has to be delivered from another store so we can’t get it till we return from Chicago.

And after our buying spree, we came home and popped open the bottle of Veuve Cliquot that didn’t get consumed on New Year’s Eve, brought out the year-old top tier of our wedding cake (it’s been in the freezer for the past year, very traditional), and are now watching a taped rerun of the series premiere of NUM3ERS. (I think that’s the alpha-numeric combination they use.) It’s not as good as I hoped. Ah well.

By the way, my new boots are snug on my feet and I. Love. Them.

Mr. Angst and I are headed to Chicago Thursday night for a long weekend campus visit-slash-anniversary trip.

I hear it’s kind of chilly up there right now.

I’m set for a coat and hat, and I have scarves coming out the ying-yang. I’ve got three pairs of gloves and I’ll take all of them with me.

But I don’t have the right kind of shoes.

I’m planning a superfast-whirlwind-boot-shopping trek today at lunch, so I need someone to tell me what kind of boots to look for. What is the most important quality to look for? Can I still be fashionable? I’m going to one of those big shoe warehouse “we’ve got it all” places, so I should have lots of options (or, at least as many options as would be available in this southern clime). Give me advice!

(BTW, I am only willing to go out and buy new boots for a weekend trip because I figure I’ll need them no matter where we end up. I know DC doesn’t get nearly as cold as Chicago, but I know it gets cold sometimes. Also, if they’re cute, I’ll wear them here, too, even if my feet get warm.)

Update: I have purchased a boot. Well, two. They have a nice grippy-ness to the tread, but are a smooth black leather, thus combining the most critical weather need (traction) with a mildly fashionable material. They are also roomy enough to accomodate a warm sock. Tonight I’ll take them home, put them on with my other winter gear and see how I like them. Should I hate them, they’ll go back and I’ll buy some insulated galoshes. Or duck shoes.

So I told Mr. Angst about my coworker’s reaction to my new hair, and his response startled me.

“Scully?” he asked. “Wow.” His eye took on a wicked gleam and he leered at me and said, “Will you call me Mulder?”

At the time, we were racing down a back road on our way to meet my cousin for dinner at the coast, and I was a bit more concerned with arriving alive than this new interest of his, but I tried to be gracious: I looked at him like the freak he is* and said, “Hell no!”

“Oh, come on! Look at us—this is just the kind of road Mulder and Scully would be driving on, late at night, looking for aliens. C’mon, call me Mulder. Pleeeeze??”

The things I didn’t know about my husband.

A weekend at the coast was just what the doctor ordered. Complete with girl talk, late nights, lots of beer, some card playing, and at least one fight.

Now we’re back and getting ready to leave for Chicago on Thursday. I’m praying the weather improves between now and then; I have a warm coat, a hat, and gloves, but I do not have an appropriate pair of winter boots. I thought about buying a pair this year; I may have to go ahead and do that in the next couple of days. Nothing worse than cold toes, except maybe cold, wet toes.

With that, I’m off to take a power nap before dinner. Six couples sharing a house with three bedrooms means Mr. Angst and I slept on one of two facing sleeper sofas. We spent much of both nights trying to arrange our feet so we weren’t playing footsie with the couple sleeping on the other sofabed. It’s a good thing we’re all such good friends.

The end of the week is nigh. I have a 3 o’clock meeting and then I’m gone gone gone. We’re heading to the coast this weekend for some poker-playing and beer-drinking at a friend’s beach house. I’ll get to see my godparents, and that’s always a treat, and I won’t be anywhere near a computer the whole time.

It will be wonderful.

Come Monday (it’ll be all right…oops, that’s another post) I’ll be ready to face the GULC status checker again.

Funniest response to the SpongeBob debacle, from my brother:

“They’ve found us out! How will we convert all the children now?”

I visited George Washington on the same day I visited GULC. It was a week before Christmas, and GW students were all in the middle of exams.

OK, so Mr. Angst and I were sort of tired that afternoon, and I was a bit cranky. We had been hauling luggage all over DC, using public transportation, and we were operating on about four hours of sleep. I think I expended all my social energy at GULC, coming up with questions and talking to people.

So I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind to evaluate GW, and you know what? I really liked the campus.
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So I got my hair cut yesterday. It needed a good cutting, since my last trip to the salon was last March. I had about four inches cut off of the back and now I have a nice, graduated bob. She, of course, styled it with the ends turned under, which my hair does not naturally do on its own, so today is probably the last day it will look as polished as it does.

At any rate, I now have a cute bob—and remember, it’s red.

My coworker just looked at me and said, “Whoa! Scully!”

Why does that bother me so much? I didn’t get my hair cut to look like a TV character, I got it because it’s a good style on me.

I know, it’s a silly thing to be annoyed by, but there you have it. Don’t call me Scully.

I’m adding to the complaints about the Gender Genie from both Legal Quandary and The Hot Librarian.

The damn thing told me I was a man 5 out of 6 times. The only reason it got the one right is because I used the word “husband” four times in that blog entry.

Seriously, the math geeks who wrote the algorithm should be stripped of their higher degrees.

I intended to eat a healthy dinner tonight so I stopped at a little eclectic noodles place I like. I got lovely yakisoba with what they call dynamite sauce—the guy at the register warned me of how hot it was, so I got it on the side. (He was wrong. I mean, it was spicy, but nothing to write home about.)

Anyhoo, I had such a lovely dinner, full of vegetables and udon noodles, that I had to go and ruin it. I am currently indulging in a mug of *real* hot chocolate—made with Dutch process cocoa powder, sugar, and milk. Oh, and I have a can of Reddi-wip at hand. I’ve topped my mug twice now.

Sometimes you just can’t help yourself.

I’m currently working on my FAFSA, because I’d like to submit it soon. Actually, I’d like to have submitted it two weeks ago, but I won’t go there.

Problem is, we can’t even begin to start our taxes until Mr. Angst’s employers pony up with his W-2s. I’m happy to guesstimate some numbers for the FAFSA, but the FAFSA website does not indicate that estimates are appropriate.

I am pretty certain that Mr. Angst made X number of dollars last year, and that we will have paid X dollars in taxes. These things are not difficult to figure out.

The question is, if I estimate on my FAFSA, how close do I have to be for it not to look bad? If I’m off by $1000 on income, is that going to piss off a financial aid advisor? Likewise, if my estimate of our taxes is lower or higher by a few hundred dollars and I have to fix it later, what impact will that have on my financial aid awards? (Which, by the way, I am pretty certain will be nil. Sucky, but true. I do, however, want those Staffords.)

I hate the FAFSA. A lot.

From Law School Barbie:

Thank God my sister-in-law gave me Glannon’s Civil Procedure for Christmas. I’ll have to look myself up.

I want one.

These are like crack. Seriously. Crack in a bag.

Also, I’m having sweet tea in honor of Milbarge. Mmmm.

(My real lunch is a cup of lentil soup, lest you think I only put sugar and starch into my body. That’s what my body likes but not what it exclusively gets.)

E. McPan posted inter-hiatus to explain her blogging break. And one of the things she said struck me:

I just don’t have anything intellectual or law-related or whatever to say.

Sigh. I know the feeling.

I’ve been trying to focus on why I’m blogging lately. With the dearth of interesting pre-law type things to write about, I feel like I’ve started filling space with randomness—music and book memes, complaints about television, blow-by-blow accounts of a day in my life. These things can’t be that interesting. Even I don’t find them that interesting.

When I started this blog, it was going to be about my law school journey, because, at the time, all I could think about was law school. But now, well, I’ve been accepted to schools, Mr. Angst has sent off his applications, and we are simply playing the waiting game—waiting for W-2s to come in so we can do our financial aid documents, waiting for his acceptances to come in, waiting to figure out where we’ll move next year. I do a lot of thinking about this stuff, but I’m hesitant to voice these worries right now: I’m not sure what to say or how to say it or how it will come across. Sort of the opposite of last summer, when I felt the only way I could possibly make sense of everything was to say it out loud, a lot.

I know that my blog has never been strictly about the law school application process—I’ve always inserted little bits of randomness. But I think I’ve been inserting too much of that lately. So I have some campus reviews on deck and I’m going to work on gathering some of my other thoughts into coherent form. And I’m going to work on enjoying the limbo instead of filling it up with meaninglessness.

Hm. Somehow I thought it would be higher.

Heidi still wins.

Milbarge is already on book #4 of the Fifty Book Challenge.

I am still slogging through my first book—mainly because I want to finish it. I have a stack of other things to read that have been pushed aside while I patiently make my way through it. I’d better pick it up after this, though, or I won’t have time to read 50 books.