Holy son of a freakin' crap.

It has been a busy few days. I have learned to knit. I made a scarf. I will put pictures of it up, when I take some and figure out how to put them up. I got into school. I registered for classes. I found an apartment. I might even be allowed to move into it, provided I can make more money than I currently do. I ... don't know where I was going with this sentence. Damn. And I was on such a roll.

Anyway, I have been through quite a week, where everything happened all at once. I might be moving to third shift weekends at work; I'll have to ask Kim how she liked working that. It would open up my ability to go to school during the week, certainly. I'm just not sure about sleeping patterns.

Fortunately, if I can swing it, I'll be living in a one-bedroom apartment, all by my lonesome. I have never had an apartment without roommates, but with rooms. It'll be a fun experience, I think. And if I'm working and going to class on an odd schedule, I won't be disturbing or disturbed by anyone else. So that's nice. And I can move out before my evil roommates have me kicked out, because they're evil.

And on the topic of school, I'm a little nervous about going back. The academics don't worry me; I've been through a bachelor's before. I can do it again. What has me shaking in my boots is an incident that happened when I went to get a student ID. The dialogue was as follows:

Me: I'm here to get a student ID.
Girl: This is the candy counter. We sell candy. You're an idiot.
Me: Fair enough. Can you tell me where to get an ID?
Girl: No. Maybe the office can help you.
Me: Thank you!

Montage of me getting sent all over the damn student center.

Me: Is this where I get an ID?
Cute girl wearing "This is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt (God, I've missed college): Yes. Why are you covered in poisonous snake bites and third degree burns?
Me: This is a very large student center. So can I get an ID?
Cute girl etc.: Sure! When were you accepted?
Me: Yesterday.
Cute etc. : Then no. You aren't in the system yet.
Me: But I am a special case! I graduated a couple of years ago, I'm coming back to school, and I might still be in the system!
Cu etc. : No, you're not.
Me: Could you at least look?
etc. : No. Try back in a couple of days.

I may have to go invisible just to survive this. (Okay, that didn't make sense, but I really wanted to work in that link.) Anyway, it's been a long day, and a long post, so I'm going to bed.

Odd.

The series Little Britain apparently features Anthony Stewart Head in the role of Prime Minister. With a mustache, he really looks like Alex Trebek. I mean, it's freaky.

Perspective.

So, spending the afternoon with Wendy has given me a little distance from the evil roommate situation. I feel like I can now look on the positive side of things. It may require a level of repression not heard of outside of the Midwest, so if you are from a part of the world where people deal with things openly and honestly, you may wish to stretch first. Here goes.

Lezzie Borden and I want essentially the same things at this point. We want her to get the hell out of this apartment at the end of June, which is a month earlier than I'd expected. We want her to get her security deposit back, because she's greedy and I'm not. She also seems to want me to leave, but that's not really for her to decide.

Anyway, I spent part of today scrounging around for potential roommates. There's a guy at work I think I could get along with. He reminds me of Turk from Scrubs. I remind myself of J.D., so there's a chance we will work well together, even if I only remind myself of J.D. because I am delusional. And if not, I've got a month and a half. Or, you know, not, since the apartment management people will want to know what's going on well in advance. I hope I'm not screwed.

Sneaky and evil.

I got a letter today from the company that owns the company from which I rent an apartment. It said that they had received my letter of intent to vacate the apartment on June 30, which would have been great, had I sent or written or in any way known about such a letter.

So now, not only do I have to find a new roommate, I have to do so right away, instead of having a couple of months to shop. Fortunately, I have a coworker who may well be interested. I get along with him, I get along with his girlfriend, and hopefully it will all work out.

I would like to say that I can't believe my roommate would do this to me, but she not only did it, she did it on May 11. If you peruse my archives, you will find out that that was an exciting day for me. What's more, she requested that I not receive any of the security deposit, but that's only fair; I'm pretty sure I never paid any of the security deposit in the first place, and now I won't have to pay for the damage she's done to the apartment. Still, not cool to go behind someone's back like that.

I have never wanted a cigarette so badly. I haven't had one since Sunday; I'm not about to break that streak for the likes of them.

Trying again.

I haven't had a cigarette since yesterday before work. I just have to keep my mind off of it, which is why I am blogging now. Addiction really is a disease; I don't have any medicine to help me through this, so I'll just have to wait it out, like a virus. Maybe I'll watch Trainspotting and feel superior.

I remember when a Buddhist monk came to our philosophy class in high school. He mentioned that, when he came to Buddhism, he smoked heavily and rode a motorcycle. Now he drives a Honda and sits in the lotus position. I'm not sure I can buy into Siddhartha Gautama's whole deal with eliminating desire, but I'd be cool with other aspects of the religion. Kind of like how I'm not sure about Jesus of Nazareth being the one true Son of God, who rose from death three days later, but I can understand many other parts of Christianity. (If true, Jesus Christ was the original zombie. Wait, no; Lazarus was first. But Jesus would also have fallen into that category. Discuss amongst yourselves.)

I want pretzel sticks, but I'm afraid that if I go out shopping, I'll just start smoking again. So for tonight, I'll hang out in my room and crash from the caffeine overload I subjected myself to earlier today. It'll get easier. It has to.

I am a horrible person.

I just had a cigarette. What can I say? An addiction is, well, addictive. On the other hand, I have a newfound and tremendous respect for my good friend Mike!, who quit and stayed quit. He is an incredible human being; I am not so much.

I'm not sure what it would take to get me to quit; on the other hand, I'm not sure what kicked off the adventures of the other night. I do intend to stick to a reduced rate of smoking, but I had also intended to stick to not smoking at all. What bugs me the most is that the ER nurse, who looked at me with total disbelief after I told her I'd quit, was right. I guess I have to really learn to listen to those with more experience than I.

So THAT'S what it's like.

I went to the ER last night. It's nice that I work in a hospital; I was feeling sick and scared, so I just drove to work on autopilot, and I was where I needed to be.

Anyway, I had an elevated heart rate, couldn't sleep, etc. The ER doctor suggested carbon monoxide poisoning, and had my blood tested for it. The guy who drew my blood had been doing it for about two weeks. Every time someone has drawn my blood in the past, it was quite painful; this time around (the first time since I've started drawing other people's blood) it went pretty well. The guy had to get me twice, but other than that, it went just fine, and I got to see what life is like for my patients.

Anyway, the labs came back with elevated CO levels, so no more smoking for me. I also broke my vow of roommate silence because of the possibility of a faulty furnace, but it turned out, the furnace had been off for two weeks, and no one was dead or dying. I was a little surprised at how relieved I was; I guess that, unlike them, I do not wish any of my roommates death. I must be an incredible freaking person.

I'm almost positive I'm negative.

Got my HIV test results today. They came back (pause for dramatic tension) negative. There's about a 1-3% chance of a false negative, but I'm a low-risk person, so the odds are incredibly in my favor, much like the odds are in the favor of a falling object continuing to fall until acted upon by some outside force.

Sorry. I've been reading a physics book for fun. It's interesting stuff, and I just finished section 3: "Field and Relativity". Some mind-bending stuff in there; I can't wait to start section 4: "Quanta". The book has got me thinking about perspective, and how limited we all are in that respect. We cannot deal with what happens to physics, well, at any frame; people don't generally like to think about physics. But even the few folks who do like to think about it have some trouble with what happens to physics at huge scales of time, speed, distance, energy, etc. We just don't have the capacity to think that way, unless we've been working hard for many years at being able to do so. I am, at this point, hit-or-miss with the concepts he's putting forth, but with a few more runs through the book, I think I'll be able to get a working grasp on it.

Another book I have been looking at made me cry when I finished it. Seriously. It starts off light and happy, with funny concepts like dying from snake venom well before anybody has a chance to go get help, and gets more serious from there. It, too, has me thinking about perspective, but also about the impact people have on their environment. Frankly, the book seems to imply that the only real difference between people and viri is that we ought to know better. There are six billion homo sapiens on the planet. There's a species of fruit bat on Mauritius that, as of publication, had a few hundred individuals left in its entire population. By global standards, the fruit bat is in some serious trouble. By Mauritius standards, it's doing fine. Great, even; there are animals whose numbers are in the single digits, and a kind of palm tree of which there is one. One member of the entire species of tree is alive, in the middle of Curepipe Botanic Gardens, which was discovered (and almost killed) while they were clearing land for... Curepipe Botanic Gardens. The very institution that showcases this tree, the hyophorbe amaricaulis (or, hyophorbe amaricaulis; it hasn't got any other name- what would be the point?), nearly drove it off the face of the earth during its own construction. This is a very powerful book, and will make you want to help out without making you feel like you're personally responsible for all these terrible things. You go, Douglas Adams. Incidentally, if you didn't know, Douglas Adams himself is extinct, but the Rodrigues fruit bat is getting by.

I needed this.

This makes me happy, and apparently, a lot of other people too. I should go visit and see them.

Every day out of law school etc.

Ha ha! Isn't the post below this one fun! What? You haven't read it yet? Well, skip down to it now, because without it, this post won't make much sense. Go ahead. I'll wait.

...

What, really? You're just now finishing? Next time, read faster. This isn't a charity, you know.

So back to what I was saying: That first email provoked in me an overwhelming feeling to respond with the perfectly obvious, yet entirely beside the point comment: "curricular" is not a noun! It is an adjective! It cannot be pluralised! "Curricula" is the plural form of "curriculum"! What is WRONG with you people?

I decided, however, not to write such an email, as I felt, this being a law school, someone else would do the work for me. And here it is.

Subject: Sour grapes can make decent vinegar, though
To: LAWSTUDENT@LISTS.WAYNE.EDU

Okay, I am not even going to enter this potentially heated discussion on the
merits, since I think that at this point during my law school career, it
would not be appropriate or polite to do so.  However, as a former Latin
scholar, I feel my esteemed Latin professor would want me to point out that
----'s original use of "curriculars" and ****'s correction of it were
both incorrect.  "Curricular" is an adjective, not a noun.  As such, it
cannot be correctly pluralized.  "Curricula", is the plural form of the noun
"curriculum."  That said, it is obvious from the colloquial context that
---- was referring to "curricular activities".  If he had submitted his
article to the Law Review prior to publication, as April sarcastically
suggests, it appears as though it still would have been published
incorrectly.

I know I am splitting hairs here.  Although I am not a member of Law Review
(and with all due respect to the dedicated people who are), I can still be
somewhat of a snob, as well.  :-)

This email makes me all kinds of happy. It is exactly what I would've written, if I were a slightly better writer.

Every day out of law school is looking better and better...

I left a law school, once. I walked out, and would like to say that I never looked back, except that I constantly look back. They are still providing me with free email service, so I use it. CNN.com sends me important updates on stories that barely affect me, and which I do not affect at all, through it.

I recently discovered emails which may have been sent by some 1Ls (first-year law students, for any civilians in the crowd), but frankly, it would only shock me if these were sent by professors, and even then, only because professors typically aren't on the Law Review.

I never got to see how the whole thing started; evidently with some article written by a student at the law school on the subject of people who get into the Law Review based, not on the merits of a submitted essay, but on the merits of their GPA (I think anyone with a 3.5 or above automatically had a spot for the taking, if they wanted it). My next post will contain a response to the following email.

Email #1 goes a little something like this:
Subject: Sour grapes make an unsatisfying whine
To: LAWSTUDENT@LISTS.WAYNE.EDU


You know how when someone picks on your family, even if there is truth in what they say, you must defend it? Well, after -----'s comments about the Law Review I feel the need to respond.
First, I want to address the "free pass" onto law review. Grading on is not
a free pass. All of us that graded on worked very hard for our grades. While getting good grades does not necessarily prove that we can write, it does indicate that we have a good grasp of legal ideas, preformed well on essay exams, and have the dedication and self-discipline to succeed in the tasks that we choose to undertake. Are there other students that have these same traits? Of course, but like it or not, there is a great deal of tradition within all law schools of selecting Law Review members according to grades. The Law Review may not be made up of the best writers at the school, but hopefully the Law Review helps us improve our writing and editing skills. Plus, to make sure that everyone, regardless of grades, has an opportunity to make it onto the "gold ring" of co-curricular activities, there is a write-on competition.
Secondly, ----'s complaints about the special privileges that come with Law Review are not all based in fact. There is no super secret Law Review I.D. card that guarantees Law Review members good jobs, good grades, scholarship money, or special treatment from the administration. Making the Law Review does not guarantee a person a fabulous dream job. True, some Law Review members have excellent jobs lined up. Some of these jobs are judicial clerkships and some are with big law firms making a ton of money. ---- should not criticize those students that managed to get a prestigious job through their hard work, people skills and well developed resumes. Some
members are pursuing lower paying careers focused more on public service, where their good grades and professional skills will help the community. There are also many smart, hard working, well qualified individuals on the Law Review that do not have jobs lined up after graduation. Those Wayne grads that succeed should not have to apologize to other
embittered Wayne grads. The Wayne grads that enjoy professional accomplishment just make the rest of us look better and elevate the university's reputation. We should be grateful to those success stories, not criticize them for reaching the top levels of the profession. The fact that Law Review allows students to pursue clerkships and top jobs more easily is just a reality of the legal profession. It is not the university's fault. It is not the Law Review's fault. It is simply the way it is.
Thirdly, not all of us on Law Review are snotty. There are a number of us that go through our law school career working to keep the fact that we are on Law Review quiet, just to avoid alienating anyone. The trouble is you do not know who we are. Granted, there are a few snobs here and there, but we
are in law school. Snobs are par for the course. Besides, publicly ridiculing those students that got good grades, made it on Moot Court, wrote on to Law Review, or achieved some other recognition that ---- does not feel is sufficiently important, is his own version of snobbery.
Despite my enthusiastic defense of the Law Review, I have never been impressed with what having "Law Review" on my resume has done for me. The Law Review is just a student organization with members who are working hard to put out a publication and keep up with school work. We secured our spot on Law Review, a traditionally prestigious organization, through a combination of luck and hard work. Occasionally, I have heard Law Review members talking and I am disgusted with how pretentious they sound, but I have had the same experience with other law students that are not on Law Review. This being
said, few things have disgusted me as much as ----'s article ridiculing the Law Review and blaming the organization for hiring criteria used within thelegal profession.
I have tried to be very objective and amiable in my response, but I am not above a little snobbery myself. I just have to point out two things, just for future reference. First, the plural form for curricular is curricula, not "curriculars," and second, maybe ---- should have submitted his article to the Law Review before he published it and we could have caught some of the mistakes.

Ahead of the curve.

All I can say is, I did it first. Now I know how Steven Colbert must feel whenever he gets to say, "I called it!"

Today, I Skype.

Skype. I'm on it. You should be too. Headsets are about $20 for a useful and functional, low end set. That's about it.

As McFly says, "Heavy".

So, I went to get tested for HIV yesterday. No real reason for it; it was just time. I had actually never been tested before. I get my results in a week, and I am scared as hell. Again, no reason; it's just a huge thing, and I've never done it before, and I have to wait a week, so it's only natural that I be scared as hell.

All of that aside, though, I think everyone should be tested. Preferably right now, but I understand if some people cannot get tested until tomorrow. It is absolutely painless. They have this new swab/sponge thingy that you stick in your mouth for five minutes, then put in a stabilizer and ship to a lab. It is totally anonymous, assuming that you don't happen to know the person who is testing you, which I did. It was a little awkward, but it still went okay. Even if the mouth swab were, by some remote and unlikely stroke of fate, to come back positive, it wouldn't be "official" that I was positive until I took a blood test, which is not, in my experience, a painless procedure. Lots of my patients tell me that they don't even feel the needle; I assume they are either lying or doped up. Every time someone sticks me with a needle (which is twice, that I can remember), I damn well feel it.

So yeah. Go get tested. It's free in many places. It doesn't hurt. It's anonymous. It's scary as hell, but you'll still recommend it to all your friends. Your favorite celebrity (Tom Hanks) did it in that movie (Big). And when it's over, you'll be a better person, people will sleep with you more, you'll make more money, and you'll be elected dictator for life of a small country. Maybe.