yay bicycle boo birds

My personal plan for avoiding gas prices, reducing my carbon footprint and getting some exercise? I ride my bike to work (usually). As long as I remember to keep my mouth shut to keep from swallowing a bunch of bugs, I have a great time.

Except for today, when a bird flew so near (i.e. the space between where I lean forward and my handlebars) that I almost got feather-clocked. I felt the whoosh of beating wings just under my chin as I pulled back to keep from colliding.

Eeeeks. At least the bird was as surprised as I was.

dilemma

I had a brief and slightly uncomfortable dilemma this morning. I was driving to work and was only about 100 feet from the lot where I normally park (when I don't ride my bike) and I saw some kind of dollar bill in the street. Hey! Free money! So I parked and walked back to get the money, half hoping that it was a $50, half hoping that it actually was money, half hoping that no one else got there first (yes I know, bad math). I got there first, and saw that it was actually money and that it was a dollar bill. Yippee! Then I picked it up and realized why it stayed so perfectly in the center of the street despite cars driving past and a light breeze. Urgh, gum. Not a little tiny bit of gum on the corner, but a melty, sticky, entire-roll-of-bubbletape piece of gum. Shit! Now, not only did I run down the street flapping like a goose to get to the money before anyone else, but I'm carrying an icky-sticky dollar that I don't know what to do with. Here is the dilemma: keep the dollar (which is totally irredeemable so I'd have to take it to the bank and exchange it, but in order to do that I'd have to find something to transport it in) or drop it for someone else to find/deal with (it was, after all, only a dollar)?

So, what would you do?

what now?

Why another law school blog? I've been reading a lot of other student blogs recently, and I've picked up on the idea that law school is tough (duh). I've also noticed that, for those who choose to share, blogging can be one big way to mitigate the stress and pressure of law school. Whether its the relief of sharing, the community of other law student bloggers, or just the ego-boost of somebody finding you interesting, blogging seems like an act of self-preservation in an environment that otherwise be a little bit dehumanizing. (Maybe I'm wrong and law school is all rainbows and unicorns.) For me, I think that blogging will help to keep me grounded and self-aware. I want to be able to enjoy and thrive in law school, and not just academically.

Plus, I know that I've benefited from reading other law student blogs, and I hope that someone out there in the interwebs will find my perspective helpful, insightful, or at least funny from time to time. And this way I can try to laugh at my own mistakes, which makes them so much less painful.

social skills that may not be useful in law school

Laughing: I realized that I'm kind of a bitch in class.
BF: What do you mean?
Laughing: I'm not friendly. I don't give people the benefit of the doubt, I just assume that they're idiots and wait for them to prove me wrong.
BF: Uh, that's not cool.
Laughing: But they are idiots!

weird trash i've picked up while working at the storage facility

1. condom...not so much weird as gross
2. chicken bone
3. a lot of Barbie shoes
4. half of a set of dentures
5. laundry detergent
6. longboard
7. fish tank rocks
8. half of a dead snake

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed picking this shit up.

there is this one place that does this one thing

Last week in class we experienced a perfect example of one of my biggest pet peeves (when I say one of I recognize that, according to some, I am relatively neurotic and may have many, many pet peeves). We were discussing the ever-present wage gap between men and women, and of course, someone had to rebut with "I don't know about that but I do know that this one tech company will only hire women, and you can't even get a raise if you are a guy, so I don't know about how accurate that is anymore." AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGHH! Stupid stupid stupid shut up shut up shut up!!

Don't get me wrong, I totally support first-hand experience as knowledge, but I have a lot of problems with this kind of example. First of all, it completely disregards all of the studies and hard work done that reveals hard data proving the existence of a pay gap. Second, it takes one example of one situation and mistakes it as being representative of all situations. Plus, you would think that someone in a WS class would pretty much accept the existence of the pay gap by now, considering the fact that it has existed since the beginning of time.

wtf?

A recent comment by my political science capstone professor, describing the limits of the political science faculty: "We're not a bunch of whores where we're going to do anything."

Just let that one sink in a little bit.