I hate Hawaii. It took Brookles AND Kate away from me. You know what Hawaii? You are probably going to sink into the ocean soon. AND I"M GONNA GET MY FRIENDS BACK. On the mainland- where it is safe. 

Me on July 30, 2014 at approximately 4:35 PM:
We're so close, everyone!

When someone asks me how long it's been since I've gone out:

Somebody ate my burrito and I'm angry - A Shaun Odyssey

Here I am, hard at work Bar Prepping, and somebody ate a prepared burrito that I bought from Trader Joe's. Let me explain why this seemingly innocuous act has pissed me off so much, to the point that I am wasting valuable study time writing this.

For the past two weeks I've been in overdrive mode for the Bar. Prior to that I was studying, but the intensity wasn't that great and I felt like I was floundering using Kaplan's lecture based system. So here I am, doing my own thing now as I suspect most of you are as well. During my hardcore study times I actually take my ADD medicine, which makes me not want to eat. I have to force myself to eat when I am on this stuff because if I don't I simply won't eat and get weak. I also have been feeling physically sick any moment that I am not studying because of the pressure that I feel to pass this god awful test. As a result I am refusing to cook, and am only eating prepared food from the grocery store. Yesterday for instance, I ate half of a crab louis salad around 10am, and then ate a thai noodle salad at 8 pm. All in all I'd say I'm taking in about 1/5 of my normal caloric intake and I think it's starting to get to me.

With that in mind I made a conscious decision this past weekend to buy some more substantial prepared food. Among my choices was a burrito from trader joes. I packed everything away in the communal fridge, putting my stuff on my shelf. I was really looking forward to eating that burrito today, but sometime between sunday night and tuesday night, some inconsiderate A-Hole snuck into the fridge and ate it. My anger is amplified by the following facts:

1. It was on my shelf.
2. Nobody else goes to Trader Joes and it had TRADER JOE'S written all over it.
3. I'm right here all day all the time, it's not like you couldn't have asked if it was mine.
4. Nobody is taking responsibility for this crime. In fact, it has been suggested that it could have been my roommates friend who visited her from portland this weekend. Well, good try but she left sunday night before I had put away the burrito.

ALL I WANTED WAS THAT F-ING BURRITO, AND NOW I AM BURRITO LESS. NOT TO MENTION THAT BURRITO COST ME ABOUT$5!!! ASDHDFJKSKFJGSDJG

So here I am. So far today I have eaten only two packages of top ramen. I'm literally going to starve.

Sidenote: If I smell weed one more time in violation of my no weed smoking in the apartment I'm going to take any weed supplies that I find and burn them in a dumpster. That'll cure any munchies that may be responsible for this crime.

ASDFJGKDFGNDFG! If you can't tell I am furious.

The number one question I would like to ask the bar examiners:

When I start an essay and I think I'm gonna totally nail it

What I imagine I will be like when my mom tries to wake me up and drive me to the bar exam next week.

Apparently, it is butt selfie Saturday!

Bottoms up, folks!

Excerpts

Sometimes, when I read my old notes, it is abundantly clear that at the time I took them, I just did not give a fuck.  I am re-reading my crim notes this afternoon/evening and there are some real gems.  Two examples:

IV. Continuing Trespass Doctrine
    1. One who takes another's property without authorization, intending only to use it temporarily before restoring it unconditionally to the owner, may nevertheless be guilty of larceny if she later changes her mind and decides not to return the property after all.
        a. Example: I borrow my neighbor's skis without asking.  Go on a dynamite ski trip.  After the trip, I love the skis -- I'm like, fuck it, I'm keeping 'em.  This is a) not cool, b) something I might actually do, and c) larceny.

II. Inchoate Crimes - Attempt
   1. blah blah blah definition of attempt blah blah substantial step blah
   2. Example: Husband decides to murder his wife for a $500k life insurance policy.  Husband TAKES OUT THE POLICY.  He plans to take his wife to Mexico to go on a kayak trip and throw her out of the boat and drown her. (Husband has clearly never seen CSI.)  Husband gets to Mexico, gets laid, decides he's really in love with his wife, decides not to kill her.  They go home and are living happily ever after until idiot husband tells his wife that lol, he was planning to kill her at one point.  Wife freaks out and calls the police.  Has husband committed attempted murder?
     a. NO! Apparently taking out the life insurance policy was mere preparation.
        i.  This is bullshit.
        ii. Second thought, maybe not bullshit because collecting the life insurance isn't part of the crime of murder.


Loooooots of learning happening here.  So fun.

Most important thing I learned today: I was not meant to consume Big Gulps of Mountain Dew

McKenzie "GingerNips" Conquers The Beast that is Insomnia

Our beloved Gingernips has been battling insomnia for weeks. In fact, it's been going on so long that it is part of my daily routine: brush teeth, wash face, lift a five pound weight for 5 seconds, and then check in on MacDog's status. It has been an intense battle and one that I am happy to report was won last night. And now, a reflection on the many stages of MacDog's journey:

The first step: DENIAL

But then, reality sets in

And none of us understood why it was happening to her, all we knew was this: 

Finally, She knew she had come to the end of the line: (This is a real pic, folks)

But alas, the sleep came to her, much like the rains to Africa or a drunk Shaun to Memos: 

Bar prep as told by Kristen Wiig

When the man at the coffee shop says I look sad:

And I see legal issues everywhere:

And when I do better on something than I thought I would:

But then commercial paper:

And then I read the sample answer for an essay:

And sometimes personal hygiene suffers:

But then I see the little arrow move up 1%:

And finally, I think about how great it's going to be when I rejoin the human race on July 31:

When anyone not currently studying for the bar complains about absolutely anything to me

Sleep, I miss you. Come back to me.

I am in the throes of a really terrible bout of insomnia that's been going on for over a week now, and it is miserable.  My bedtime is 10PM usually; sleep is one of my all-time BFFs. We have friendship bracelets and they are called my blanket and pillows and the fact that I can't fall asleep feels like a personal betrayal on par with the Othello/Iago fiasco (maybe. I am too lazy to wikipedia it but there was definitely a Julia Stiles movie about it. My confidence on this point is approximately 52%).

Here is a fun list of some of the things I have gotten up to as the sweet succor of sleep plays the cruelest game of hide and seek I've ever been part of: (Actually that's not true because one time my douchebag brother told me we were playing and sent me to hide and then watched Saved By The Bell for a FULL EPISODE while I crouched on top of my parents' dresser in their closet, incognito as shit all covered up in my dad's dress shirts.  But I digress.)

I tried in vain to choose a contemporary piece of music to be the score to a song I've been composing since high school, when I had a few weeks where I only got three hours of sleep a night.  The lyrics are mostly "Can't sleep, SO TIRED, Can't sleep, SO TIRED!"  Before you judgmental sloots cast aspersions on my lyricism, remember that this is a DIRGE, borne of a bone-deep need to catch some Z's.  I KNOW THAT APOSTROPHES AREN'T THE RIGHT WAY TO INDICATE PLURALS BUT "Zs" LOOKS WRONG.

Anyway, I thought maybe I would use that Band of Horses song, and instead of "I could sleep.... I could sleeeeeeeep" just say "I can't sleep..... I can't sleeeeeep," but that feels too on-the-nose.  The search continues.

I youtube searched things that I thought might be soporific in some way.  Sample search queries: "make me sleepy" "hypnosis?" "lullaby music."  The "hypnosis" search got me to the weird part of youtube and I got super creeped out, so now, instead of just being hyper-alert, I am also deeply uncomfortable with the deviance of humanity.

I have watched two (and counting!) episodes of The Mindy Project. Initially I thought it was too cheerful and uppity (and thus, stimulating) to play while futilely trying to sleep.  (Update: second episode just ended and I am wiiiiide awake.  Third episode? Don't mind if I do!) However, after the above youtube efforts failed MISERABLY, I decided that maybe I'm just never going to fall asleep again and this is Day 1 of the 11 or so days I have left to live.  Let's just hope days 8-10 of severe, deadly insomnia are as fun as they say they are.  I hear hallucinations are on the table.

I spent a full thirty minutes searching the internet in vain for a leaked ebook copy of a book that comes out on August 7.  I could not find it.  At least google showed up for the search engine game -- when I looked on bing, it gave me literally 26 results.  Come on, bing. Get your head in the game.

I played four crosswords and only cheated on one of them.  Batting .750, what whaaaat!

I installed a Nintendo 64 emulator and raced a quick Star Cup on MarioKart (as Yoshi, obviously).  Turns out Bowser's Castle is infuriating to navigate without a joystick control -- learned that one the hard way, by which I mean I came in 7th place.  The only racer worse than me was Wario.  WARIO, GUYS.  There really is nothing worse than being beaten by Princess Peach.

I searched on pinterest for houses with secret passageways.  I then googled local architects that build houses with secret passageways.  I lost track of things at this point but somehow wound up reading the trivia section on IMDB for "Scooby Doo."  The TV series, not the live action movie.  It's an important distinction.

I wrote this haiku:

Morpheus, why must
you be such a cocktease? I
Miss you, boo.  I do.

Morpheus, Greek god of dreams, and some smug beezy.  I hate her.

This blog post is too long.  I apologize.  I thought I might bore my brain into submission but apparently I am immune.  Ughhhhh. 

Lowery out. But not out as in "out like a light." WOULD THAT I COULD BE OUT LIKE A LIGHT!

Driving Range Shenanigans

Shaun, DBJ, and I went to the driving range today.

Here is a recap, as told in pictorial form:

Deeble, always ready to go. 

I was told her flats have traction and her sleeve zippers allow for maximum swing flexibility. 

Side note: I really feel like arm zippers will be a new trend for professional athletes. There really are no downsides to it. 

Quote of the day: "This is like making a mess, but not having to clean it up yourself." 

This girl was killing it.

Shaun: "They call me Big Balls Shaun"

Haha jk. This was Coach Callahan teaching DBJ the proper golf grip. Yep.

BTW, Shaun has some legit golf skills. 

Then here I am, rocking the neon per usual and trying to get a tan on them pale legs. 

Until next time!

That's embarrassing.

What are you trying to say, FACEBOOK?

So not only was Warren Harding one of the worst presidents of all time, he was also one of the worst authors of lusty poetry. I mean I'm not saying I'm a big connoisseur of lusty poetry, but this? Come on, really?

"I love your poise / Of perfect thighs / When they hold me / In Paradise / I love the rose / Your garden grows / Love seashell pink / That over it grows." 

Fun fact: he named his penis "Jerry," which was ironically also an anti-German slur used at the time. So much self loathing.... 

"Wish I could take you to Mount Jerry. Wonderful spot. Not in the geographies but a heavenly place, and I have seen some passing views there and reveled in them." 

Gross. Absolutely Gross. 

For more on this fascinating topic: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/magazine/letters-warren-g-harding.html?rref=magazine&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Magazine&action=keypress%C2%AEion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article&_r=0

Wowzers.

Received these texts from our DBJ as Liu and I drove home last night.  We discussed the matter further this morning:

Jenna:  hahah

we were lighting off fireworks in alleys

and this cop came

i freaked out

so i ran the opposite direciton of everyone else

and PRETENDED to be talking on my cell phone

to no onw

and i realized i was holding three fireworks

and they wouldnt fit in my jorts

So i stuck em in my underwear

#nailed it

what if i blew my own vagina off?!

Happy Fourth!!!!!!

Trying to interact normally with people after being by myself in my apartment for two days

Bitches be Hangry: A Treatise on War in the Middle East*

Some of you may have noticed that I can be a little bit impulsive.  And also a little bit prideful.  So when Ali and I were discussing Ramadan (because Ali is ACTUALLY OBSERVING RAMADAN which, as I came to find out, is completely insane) and the idea of me trying Ramadan for a day came up, I agreed to it/volunteered to do it without really thinking and then stupid blabbermouth me told everyone about my plan so there was no way I could back out with my pride intact.  I decided to document my Ramadan day for the blog, partly because DBJ demanded it and partly because I will do literally anything to avoid studying for the bar.  Spoiler alert: I survived.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

1:35 AM

Did you all know that the University District Safeway is open until 2AM? Did you also know that when you try to google the U-District Safeway’s hours, google’s first autofill response is “University District Safeway SHOOTING?!?” (Emphasis added.) What a charming neighborhood this is, guys.  Note to self: invest in mace.

All of the above fun learning took place when, at 12:30AM, I was halfway done preparing my pre-Ramadan late dinner/midnight snack of pancakes and I realized that I was out of syrup.  It was a catastrophic oversight.  I surveyed my kitchen for any other suitable options but I already had one pancake made – I could smell the splash of vanilla I’d added to the batter...  These were the desperate times they warn you about.  I did some quick internet searching and set off for Safeway.

It was not the smoothest of journeys.  Fun fact: slamming your finger in your car door hurts just as badly as it did when you were six years old and your mom forgot you still had to get out of the car!  At least this time I had the liberty to say what I was thinking, which was “fuck you, you motherfucking fuck fuck FUCK.”  Alessandro (my car) is a fickle bitch sometimes.

Anyway, syrup was procured. Pancakes were eaten.  I am pretty full, and this is about four hours past my bedtime so I’m going to sleep like a baby.  This Ramadan thing is going to be a walk in the park.

3:23 AM

I’ve made a terrible mistake.  Can’t sleep.  CAN’T SLEEP.

Also I’m starting to feel like sleeping through Ramadan is cheating and I am nothing if not a woman of integrity (haha?) (but seriously).  This might just be the exhaustion talking though.  I’ll reassess tomorrow (today) evening when I wake up.

12:32 PM

Just woke up! Actually, this is the second time – I initially woke up at 7:30, inexplicably, and looked at my clock, thought to myself, “puppy please,” and went back to sleep.  Not going to lie, was hoping to see at least 2PM on my clock when I checked it just now.  I am super freaking thirsty. 

I am also realizing I don’t know the rules of this thing AT ALL.  Hasty decision-making, man.  I have some googling to do.  Preliminary questions: am I allowed to brush my teeth? What time is sunset?  Is it cheating to take a four-hour nap?  Also, what is the religious meaning behind Ramadan? Because I am starting to feel like a tool for using it as my personal challenge day.

2:57 PM

So, turns out Ramadan is about being mindful of the suffering of others and being thankful for the blessings in one’s own life.  I took a few minutes to think about that just now.  At the risk (or rather, certainty) of sounding like a cheeseball, I am thankful for YOU fools, for being hilarious and sarcastic and smart (or dumb in funny ways, as I strive to be) and generally awesome.  This may be the thirst talking, but I really appreciate you guys.  (I am realizing now that I don’t know who all reads this, which is unnerving.  So I should say: I’m grateful for SOME of you.  Ha?)  I am also thankful for the internet, for the fact that diet dr. pepper exists, and for the fact that my baby niece who is SO SO CUTE has recently decided that maybe I’m NOT a terrifying monster and that I can hold her sometimes, under very specific conditions and when an escape route is clearly available.

Grumpster selfie.  

Notice the tear from when Aunt Kenzie had the AUDACITY to make eye contact!

On another note entirely, my housemate is out of town for several days and he asked me to take care of his cat, the creatively-named Miss Kitty.  Miss Kitty is a stray that he adopted because she hung out on our porch all the time.  I thought he should name her Stoop Cat, or T-Rex Bone Crusher or SOMETHING badass, but I am allergic to cats and assumed none of the responsibility of caring for her, so he went with Miss Kitty instead.  Miss Kitty usually gets her dinner around 6PM, but tonight that sloot is going to have to wait.  In this house, if Mama ain’t eating, NO ONE EATS.

I am so hungry, guys.  =(

5:11 PM

I am in a very weird, masochistic place right now.  Also, some weird stuff comes up when you google image search "cheeseburger."  This one is my favorite:

7:32 PM

Only two more hours! Getting pretty excited about dinner, but also not thinking about it because it makes my stomach hurt.  Time is crawling by, as though to deliberately mock me with its slowness.  I would murder someone for a diet dr. pepper, but my pride is at stake, and so I shall be strong. 

I also learned, thanks to the internet and a helpful reminder from Ali, that Ramadan is about more than abstaining from food and water.

Thanks, buddy. 

8:30 PM

I am dominating this Ramadan thing.  I decided to make some sweet rolls just for fun and I put together the dough and there were some delicious remnants on my fingers after I kneaded it and I DIDN’T EAT THEM.  I WASHED THEM AWAY.  Hashtag killing it.

9:22 PM

I FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF MYSELF BREAKING THE FAST!  I had McDonalds french fries, and they were the best thing I've ever tasted.  Since there is no way to get that moment in time back to document for posterity, I offer in the alternative this glamor shot I made Liu pose for when she asked me to take a professional-looking picture of her for work a couple summers ago.

Shockingly, this is not the picture she went with for her office's website.

Bottom line: Ramadan is hard.  I am more fully aware of my weakness as a human, given that 12-year-olds in the Middle East do this for a month straight and I made myself literally lol at the thought of doing it for a second day.  I think, for now, I'll stick with Methodism.

*This is not actually a treatise on war in the Middle East, a topic on which I am entirely unqualified to comment.  My Fox News show on the subject debuts soon.

When my friends are doing something fun and I'm stuck inside studying:

Tonight is Darby's book club. Many of us have been fantasizing about life after the bar where we are successful and fabulous and obviously start a book club. Tonight I decided to study at the table while they were out on the balcony so I could sort of pretend that I was part of the group. As they bask in the sunlight, sipping rose and talking about reading that they CHOSE to do, I had never felt more pathetic. After finishing my sad little prepared salad and tea, I thought maybe I would feel better if I deebled some wine and cheese and cured meats from them. So I did. It didn't really make me feel any better about my current state, but I always forget how satisfying cured meat can be.

When I'm in an accepting mood regarding bar prep:


And then I look at how much work I'm supposed to do that day:
 

How I feel when I go to bar class every day and say hi to the LLM students. They never respond. But they did report me to Barbri for playing the videos too fast. That was awesome.

And this is how I feel at the beginning of a four hour lecture when the teacher has a VERY annoying speech pattern. 

It turns out its easier to get chubby then to get un-chubby – A Shaun Odyssey

Yes, a revelation for you all too I’m sure. Since Law School ended I’ve been on working towards a couple of goals, all of which have to do with erasing the side effects that I experienced in Law School. #1 is to pass the bar, which I’m pretty sure my 3^rd year of law school made more unlikely. #2 was to win the deathmarch, nailed it. And #3 was to get un-chubby. #3 is tougher than I remember it last time I got un-chubby, way back in junior high. I’m not sure exactly when I got chubby, but it may have had something to do with the lack of physical activity and living 2 blocks away from Chipotle for two years.

In my quest to get un-chubby I’ve pretty much abandoned eating out, drinking, except when Brady forces me to at World Cup Soccer Parties (USA USA USA), and Chipotle/Hawaiian BBQ, which I consider to comprise an essential food group on their own. To resist temptations, I’ve taken to preparing a ton of food in advance and sealing it in those little Ziploc® entre sized plastic containers. When I get hungry I take out exactly one container and eat it. This has worked pretty well but it means that I eat almost exclusively spaghetti with turkey meatballs about 5 days a week. I’m considering strategic options to expand my meal selection so that I can rotate fajitas with turkey meatball spaghetti. I also eat a lot of snacks to avoid eating all the Ziploc® containers within two days of preparing them. For instance, today I was eating a banana when I made a pretty great discovery. Sidenote: if you’ve never seen me eat a banana I promise you its about impressive as a person eating a banana can be. Anyway, so I was eating a banana when I spied a dish of sugar and cinnamon mixture that my roommate had been using to make snicker doodles. I looked at the mixture, and I looked back at the banana and it clicked. I dipped the banana into the mixture and took a bite. I don’t want to say I invented the next great food craze, but sugar and cinnamon on a banana really take it to the next level. I’d encourage all of you to try it ASAP.  Anyway on the diet side I figure I’ve taken my calorie intake from 4,000-ish to <3,000. 

Exhibit a. find dish of sugar and cinnamon lying around, procure banana. This banana happens to be pretty huge. If you can't eat that much for a snack, you should buy smaller bananas.

Exhibit b. Dip Banana in mixture and eat.

On the exercise front I’ve been hitting the gym on the regular, but unfortunately I’m not the only one with a little extra time during the summer. The gym is packed with Frat-Stars and exchange students, so much so that you can hardly find equipment to use unless you go very late at night. The exchange students tend to just sit on equipment and text, and the Frat-Stars take a zillion different weights off the racks and then proceed to not really lift them. For privileged white kids they are really embracing the occupy movement #OccupyWeightRoom so Shaun can’t do his work-out the way he wants to. Anyway, I find myself getting pretty pissed off at all these characters, like I used to, but the difference is that now I don’t have the same weight room street cred that I imagine I once had, but on the flipside I’m also a giant so I should have that intimidation factor going for me. Altogether it probably evens out I guess. The singularly most annoying thing however, is that one of the two 50lb dumbbells on the rack that I use has been missing for the past week and a half. This is a major problem for me right now and I’m going to assume that a frat star or exchange student did something dumb with it until I’m shown otherwise.

Too bad they can't be this organized in the weight room. 

I don't know what the exchange students and frat stars do in the weight room, I try not to watch them as I go about my business, but I imagine its probably a lot of this.

GUEST POST: in honour of WHORE ISLAND

Things I learned in the last week:

1.  A majority of the justices on the supreme court DO have cellphones. This turned out to be good for America, for the constitution,for common sense, and for constraining police behavior in a meaningful way.

2.  A majority of the justices on the supreme court do NOT have vaginas; nor do they know anyone with a vagina who works at a Hobby Lobby for $9 an hour. (BTW, have you ever known a woman who refers to her vagina as a Hobby Lobby? Well, now you do. . .) The Hobby Lobby decision is bad for America, for common sense, for those who can read, for women generally (who, once again, are confronted with the reality that a large part of the world's population thinks that reproductive rights are irrelevant to basic health care), and especially for women who have the misfortune of working at Hobby Lobby for $9 an hour.

Did any of you have a conversation with a man today about the Hobby Lobby decision? Did it go something like this?

You: "OOOOOOHHHFDFDkdddfgghghhghag omfg!"
Him: "Well, to be fair. . . "

If this man is at all important to you, you need to let him know that he needs to sort himself out. When men use the expression "to be fair," it is usually the first sign of white-man degenerative disease, which can and does afflict men of all ages. The good news is that Obamacare DOES cover treatment, for men anyway. The only available treatment for women - really, a cureall for all sicknesses - is getting a lobotomy.