Fastforward: Day 78 to Day 82...

Okay, I'm back. But I'm not gonna go back and try to catch up. Basically, it's crunch-time folks. Yes, yes, technically exams aren't until the second week of December (which is dagnam frankly bad enough!!), but considering the fact that I still have a 10-page paper, 4 outlines to finish, daily homework plus catch up for classes I'm missing, and all to get done before a plane ride to catch a mere week from tomorrow!? Do-able?: yes. Craziness?: also in the affirmative.

I know, i know, I bring these things upon myself. Nothing new there. Nonetheless, it's also a gosh darn reason to prematurely end this post, if i ever did hear one!

Faretheewe--

Day 77...

So I'm getting used to this chili, a little bit. While Mike was here he held my hand and led me through the mechanics of several gorgeously home-made dinner dishes. Among these was a vegan chili with fresh corn and broccoli; a coconut-based stir fry with curry and sweet potatoes; and an astonishing veggie lasagna. Now that I've been left to my own devices (and all of his delectable left-overs have been summarily consumed) I decided to try my own hand at that silly little chili we'd mulled over together. Not entirely disastrous, I have to say...but there's still time to be proven wrong.

Everything started out smoothly: a can of red and a can of black beans; firm tofu sauteed in garlic and butter; a perfect-sized yellow pepper; and herbs & spices such as you'd never think possible (and perhaps for good reason), such as fresh basil; crushed red pepper; ground black peppercorn; salt; brown sugar; cayenne pepper; Parmesan cheese; and perhaps other things... The real problem (besides my complete lack of understanding when it comes to complimentary flavors) reared its ornery head when I joyously opened the vodka spaghetti sauce to use as a base. The damn thing had been stubbornly fixed shut since we'd bought it two weeks ago, which is the only reason i hadn't already found an excuse to devour it. So jubilant was I when I managed to open the crazy jar without the help of man or woman alike, that I'd already poured in half its contents before off-handedly dipping a finger into the excess on the dabbled lid. When I brought the cursed finger to my suddenly dismayed mouth, I was shocked with what i tasted!!

Perhaps it was just the fact that this new brand of vodka sauce was unfortunately inferior to others out there...or perhaps it had more to do with the fact that it was a cream-base (kinda strange for a chili)...but whatever the reason that got my skepticism a-growling, I directed my gaze to the top of the lid. Partially obscured by stickers indicating price per product, I noticed the tell-tale numbers of the "Use by" date. Peeling the stickers back with my thumb-nail, horror dawned as my eyes gradually communicated to my mind the numbers' true meaning. They read: 4/28/2009...almost seven months expired. Son of a bitch!

Too late, the guilty sauce mingled and disappeared inside every other ingredient, infiltrating to the very bottom of that god-forsaken pan and tainting the promise of a perfectly legitimate & fully independent vegetarian chili. "Well, I'll be damned," I thought, "I really have managed to fuck-up a fool-proof dish..."

Ah well! Despite the worrisome expiration date, the sauce didn't taste weird in a GONE BAD sorta way, more like a vaguely strange spice-selection kinda way. So what the heck? I figured I'd finish cooking the freakin' thing, at least. And since i finished cooking it, i figured I'd better give it a fair chance by trying it out too--and frankly, I AM getting used to it, now that I've eaten half a bowl. So now I figure I'll just go ahead and eat the other half--cuz what's life without a little risk? But just for the record, if I die, be sure to sue Garden Gourmet for me. That way my short law career won't have been a complete waste. =P

Faretheewell folk!,
-LaW

Day 76...

Ahhh, the sketchy-mellow return of Friday...again, with the false sense of security. False or not, it's feeling freakin' great. I did a ridiculously little (says the slowly dawning terror) amount of homework today, and class was even kinda a wash. Goals for the weekend: 1) Write my crazy final paper so I can get the damn thing turned in by Tuesday and jet-lag myself all the way to happy Japan; and 2) Get together a decent resume and adequate beg-letters as prep for finding a Summer internship...preferably in Cali? (Is that too freakin' lame for words? ... Nope!!)

But beyond the hullabaloo of the upcoming weekend (wherein KATIE will be present again in my daily life, starting tomorrow night and lasting out the whole gorgeous week!!), tonight was marvelous. A friend from school had her 30th birthday hang-session tonight, (incidentally, also her 30th birthday! And don't worry, of course I made her cookies...till, like, 2 in the morning last night, in fact...all that high-energy slavery revolution talk, I guess, :) so she invited a few folks out to a bar/venue on the lower east side called The Living Room, where a friend that she hadn't seen for 12 years would be performing: Malcom Rollick, formerly known as 'Christie'.

Anyway, i'm fading (and freakin' cold!!) now, but the night was "AwesomE"--good hippie-folk-music; great law-students-and-others-trying-not-to-talk-about-law-school conversation. Can't ask for much more than that, as far as unwinding goes...until, of course, the winding back up starts again. But we'll certainly save that for tomorrow, eh!?

Faretheewell folk,
-LaW

Day 75...

You'll never believe what went down tonight! Check this out: those posters I helped to partially design for the Women's Association of Law Students a week or so back was for an event that happened tonight. And it was freakin' phenomenal. You wouldn't believe what kinda human trafficking (aka: slavery) is going on under our very noses right as we speak!! The three top doozies: 1) Domestic Servitude; 2) Agricultural Labor; 3) Forced Prostitution. And I'm not even talking in a metaphorical sense, like, "Dude, you know those under-paid workers, dude? Well, like, they're like slaves, man..." No! That's not how i mean it, I mean it like real-live legit slavery, in the guise of the mundane. What does an African boys' church choir, a group of deaf Mexicans, a troop of Chinese acrobats, and a hair-weaving beauty salon set of braiders have in common? Slavery!! Look it up, yo: The Slave Next Door & Very Young Girls. This here's some wack shiznit, lemme tell ya. It made me momentarily stoked about lawyerism by the end of the night, too, when I found out that the ACLU is currently in a suit against the U.S. government for handing budgeting allocation for the whole government-funded public interest sector to a big crazy Catholic organization!! Church and state, people: separate!! Anyway, there's my nightly rant. Needless to say I'm all kindsa psyched up... (Admittedly, not exactly an uber-difficult task for me, but still...this is some crazy shit for being all-the-too-true.) "But anyway. Um, uh, yeah."

Faretheewell folk,
-LaW

Day 74...

Okay, so we're gonna be cheating here. I don't know why the obsession, but when I call it a 'daily log', somehow it seems infinitely better to me to post-date and catch up rather than just skip days and make the next post fantabulous. It's super silly, too, cuz either way I'm not really posting every day...

But that shall change!! I'm back on the band wagon, and it all started with Wednesday!! I mean, today... So get this, Wednesday is a gorgeously free day: rather than two nerve-wracking classes to prepare for, there's just one, see. And it's the AFTERNOON one, too, so none of this early morning crap. Unfortunately, the effect of all this free time is the false sense of security that leads to sleeping it away. I get all comfy in the notion that a free morning is a long morning, brimming with time aplenty to sleep and do the rest of the week's homework and laundry and letters to long-lost loved ones. In reality, alls you really got time for is to wake up slightly later than usual, walk the dog, and take an extra long shower before it's time to go anyway--and still you get there 10 minutes late. Psha!!

Still, it WAS lovely outside today, even though it blows having to share the bed with the dog again. (Don't tell her I said that.) But keep in mind--suddenly my definition of 'lovely' has expanded to include 50 degree weather days...a bad sign, I be thinking. Nonetheless!

Faretheewell folk,
-LaW

Day 73...

(Mike's birthday!!) And the grind is back in full force for me, after a blissful weekend. Then it dawns on me: Japan is 17 days away!!? That's crazy talk. The two bullet points still to check off (besides the money-planning factor) is 1) Sierra in my absence, and 2) figuring my truck situation out... Besides that: Outlines! Legal Papers! Katie & Man coming up on Saturday!!! And of course, the everyday rush of homework stuffs...

This afternoon was actually a total wash: Mentally satisfying in that I cleaned and organized the whole freakin' mess of an apartment--but at the same time, no paper-writing activity as previously hoped. That's alright, I'm sure to start work early tomorrow, what with having Wednesday mornings off these days...w00t! One other item on the agenda, however--which has been in my good intentions for weeks, incidentally enough--is letter writing! (Especially to sweet Zoe, who I now have received 2 consecutive letters from, without adequately responding to either. Not Kosher!!)

But yes, all that for another day. (Namely, tomorrow.) For tonight, I'm off to bed, off to bed. It's like dried mango, see. That same part of me that buys loads all at once, reasoning that it'll last longer, seems also to believe that going to bed early means waking up less late. At least potentially. And so far, precedent to the contrary hardly seems to faze me at all, what with my undying faith in that very potential...my own? Ha!

Faretheewell folk,
-LaW

Fastforward: Day 68 to Day 72...

The most fabulous long weekend with Mike ensued--beginning Thursday morning and ending Monday morning (today). Halloween as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, and some amazing stuff before and after. But I'm really in no position to detail the time here and now--gotta play the catch up game... (And it's totally worth it, make no mistake!)

Faretheewell folk,
-LaW