My Wii

I owned a Wii today. I had it for three whole hours. I offered it around for market price, but nobody wanted it and nobody thought I could sell it. I never even opened it.

So then I sold it on craigslist. I priced it at $80 over market to pay for my shipping and for my new game, and that's how you sell a Wii in 3 hours. And the buyer didn't murder me (yet - he could track me down). And I converted those profits into:

This game was the whole reason why I bought my xbox way back in April. The game was delayed for six months. It was supposed to be awesome, game of the year awesome. But you know what? Super Mario Galaxy >> Mass Effect, but Super Mario Galaxy requires a Wii.

Fancy fish and chips and some reindeer

Typical LA trip for me, some shopping, some Japanese food, visit Giant Robot store, stuck in traffic at Carlsbad, back home to feed Muffy.

This time we checked out another mall, The Grove. They took this 80 ft tree, killed it, stuffed its skeleton with ornaments and set up lights and stars and reindeer overhead. But don't worry, it's ok because it's probably beautiful at night and they've got all this fancy lighting and the children will be fascinated and maybe children > 80ft tall trees.

Since we couldn't eat at the Grove b/c it was absolutely packed with shoppers (they've got Fashion Valley traffic x2 but everywhere within a 50min radius), we headed off for Little Tokyo-but not the one that's downtown, the one that I can locate. If I'm ever lost in LA, I'm probably at the corner of Olympic and Sawtelle.

I really wanted to get a waffle. There's this great waffle shop in Ginza in Tokyo. The waffles are eaten like hot cookies there without any toppings or syrup. I think that shop is populated by all the gaijin + me but it does good enough business for at least 2 years. Anyhow, I thought this waffle shop would be like that . . . but it wasn't. First, they emphasized toppings. Second, it's soft and has a lot of egg in it rather than the harder texture. And worst of all, they lacked the vital ALMOND flavor, I had to get cinnamon and it's not even close.


Came back and fashioned fancy-ass fish and chips from Trader Joes frozen items. This costs about $4-5/person and you could add in veggies for almost nothing more. It takes about 20min to make b/c of the garlic fries. Can't say its particularly healthy though...

Rotting Tropical Fruit

Yesterday the school decided to give me money, because I satisfied the dual criteria of "generally good resume" and "lousy future job prospects." Approximately 50% of the school satisfies those categories, but I'm not going to say I don't deserve it because for once in my life I think I do. So now that we're going to possibly maybe but not really break even next semester provided we don't go on a massive shopping spree, we had to celebrate. And I celebrated by making TANGERINE BAVARIAN. I don't know why it's two colors...but it is...

I made the cake with the sauce and I actually did it correctly and the free trade sugar acted almost like normal sugar* but the dish was really disappointing! The recipe itself is just a glorified version of orange jello garnished with whipped cream only it's not deconstructed (Anthony Boudain tells me deconstructed food is in now). Tangerines are great by themselves but here with the cream and eggs emphasizing its flavor, it takes on that flavor of rotting tropical fruit. Now, I don't know if tangerines are tropical, but it's got a flavor a little bit like durian. In fact I'd call it durian light, it's even the same color and if you added in vanilla extract... It's light and creamy for about 1second, then the 8 eggs kick in and the aftertaste is sick sweet.

I think it's better with cranberry or pomegranate juice, skip the eggs, put in a crust, cut into little squares, top it off with rum. The sauce is gold though, but that's just orange flavored caramel. Oh another thing, the recipe takes longer than 25min if you skip the ice bath. And you need good kitchen gear. That's my experience with melting sugars - you need good kitchen gear or the sugar'll burn.

*Whole Foods free trade organic sugar. It tells me it's just sugar, nothing else, but it's sweeter than normal sugar. And when I heat it up it tastes just like high fructose corn syrup, it coats your tongue and stays in your mouth even after you brush your teeth. I may go back to mass market kill gorillas and small towns sugar.

*Free trade coffee on the other hand . . . store brand free trade organic coffee > Tully's > dunkin donuts > starbucks.

Tomorrow => attempt at roast beef w/ port sauce after 36hrs of dry brining.

Happy Post!!

My last few posts are kinda sad, so I thought I needed to post some happy things to even out the universe.

Negative: it rained a lot so I stayed home.
Positive: I saw the FUTURAMA movie!! And if you go to ilovebender.com, you can see more! They're going to make four movies over a few years.

Negative: it's really cold and I don't have central heat.
Positive: There's SNOW on the mountains! I don't know which mountains, but they're really high and really far and I suspect you can't usually see them through the smog.

Negative: I live next to the mall, the biggest and best mall within 30 miles, and the december shopping madness seriously hinders my auto-mobility.
Positive: OMG I'm going to save so much money!

Negative: The store doesn't sell basic juicers, but they do carry mango splicers and avocado mashers.
Positive: I'm going to gain a lot of arm strength. And wait till you see what I make: Tangerine Bavarian.

Facebook Meets Blogging

C sent me this article: How your creepy ex-coworkers will kill facebook.

In a nutshell, it's about how on facebook people can trace years worth of your social relationships, so even if you didn't talk to guy A for years and years, he can still find you and others can see you once knew him. This all seems harmless.

I'm clearly the least (financially) successful out of everyone who's ever graduated from my high school or undergrad, and everyone knows that. It bugs me sometimes so I make these online rants that I would never discuss in person. But I never post my justifications, the fact that I hated the laboratory, I won't sit in front of a computer all day, I refuse to put in the hours required in banking, hard work isn't my thing, yet people who I don't talk to on a regular basis will take what they read as reality and it influences their behavior towards me in the future. That's the part I don't like (why do I care?). Anyhow, I removed the link from facebook temporarily. I'm thinking C has a good point in keeping little to no online presence but I also think it's a part of the future so I'm conflicted.

Other important things I discovered during finals week...
1) organic free trade sugar doesn't properly dissolve for baking purposes

2) capacity for marriage is lower than that for making a will, which is lower than making a normal contract

3) banana republic online only lets you use two gift cards at a time so if you're going to give someone $150 worth in gift cards, you should put it on 1 gift card.

Some days I can't deal with people.

Where I live I have people spying on me (they pretend its ok b/c its the babies running up to my windows), I've got a wannabe American Idol girl who sings amazing grace over and over 24-7 and has recently discovered Christmas music too, and my upstairs neighbors move furniture and hold congress at all hours of the day. That's in addition to other strange unemployed/stay at home mom types who do laundry and walk around on their cell phones by my place. YES I should move, but that's another story.

Some days I can't stand law school students. Not all of them, but the ones who are strange and say strange things to me. Or maybe it's me who's strange. We won't get into details, just that you can see perfectly normal people, something happens (I don't always know what), and then that person becomes strange.

And some days I can't stand my cat. You know ever since I got back, she's started meowing at 3am and won't stop literally until I get up, and then the meowing resumes 15min later.

Walmart Commercials

I've got some real issues with most of the commercials on tv, but this one's gotta be the worst.

It's a Walmart commercial for an HDTV - the lady's talking about how getting this HDTV will bring her family together, because everyone's going to huddle around the big screen during the entire holiday season, and presumably for the rest of their lives.

That commercial sums up everything that's wrong with anything in this world. That's right. Think of a problem, trace it to its roots, and you'll find the Walmart commercial. In fact, even if I didn't know anything about Walmart, I would ban the store right now and the corresponding ad agency just for producing that ad. Because not only does it promote a torpid unhealthy lifestyle, it also subjects entire families to brainwashing and utter dependence on mass media. Oh and it's not the type of mass media that encourages any sort of free thought or debate, no it's the kind that tells you exactly what you need to know while you nod in blind agreement.

One day if I could, I'd ban television. I find the Internet mildly tolerable only because it has some type of interactive component (chat rooms = free speech; blogs = freedom to create your own world). Online video games are alright because of the (fake) social aspect. But television has no redeeming qualities. At all. And the Walmart ad, the fact that it's even accepted as a commercial on network television without a murmur from anyone else, means those very values of slothness and passivity have wrought their way so deep into our society as to become part of who we are, so deep that every family now "needs" a "home theatre" system.

My family's just like the Walmart family. I've got pieces of a home theatre system myself. And I can't get away from it.

Questions

• Why would you use the sound of a baby crying as your ringtone?
  
• How does my delivery man know that I'm a third year student?
  
• Why do I get Kings hockey on tv, but not Ducks?
• What's with the shorts/flipflops/unshaved uncombed hair look these days?
• Why did my brother give me a $50 coldstone gift card?
• Why is there no market to trade this card?
  
• Why did I use the card to buy an ice cream cake?
  
• Am I going to eat the whole thing?
  

Obligatory Muffy Pix

I changed back to the Red Bed. Muffy loves the red bed. And her blue blanket. Oh, she especially likes it in those minutes after I get up, but before I remember to make my bed....she takes over the sheets.


Here I attempted to use flash from really far away, and instead got a Muffyzilla.

I gotta tell you about the Mistral Chicken dish I made. It's really good.

You know how you've got that one annoying friend who's like,
"my mom makes this really good dish and its better than anything you can get in the restaurant."

Or the "I know this girl who makes this dish and its super good and its all I want to eat."

Well, this is one of those dishes that's really easy to make, impossible to mess up, and pretty damn good. And I mean, it's chicken. No "I don't eat red meat" or "I'm on a diet" type arguments b/c it's a relatively healthy dish! Of course it won't satisfy readers of the omnivores dilemma and other vegans...

So it's a good recipe for company. Easy and fast. It'll shut up some of those annoying friends. If only for a little bit. Unless they don't like garlic.

My Birthday!

On my birthday, I took the MPRE! That's right, I got up early and went to take a 2 hour bar ethics exam. Oh, and on the Friday night before, you know what I did? I stayed up really late and studied for the test!! In fact that's what I did all day Friday!!

But it's not the worst birthday ever. No, I've had a lot worse. In undergrad I had my midterms on my birthday. You'd think everyone would want to grab a drink after exams, but sometimes you just feel like crap.

After the test (which sucked), I went shopping for my gifts. Being poor, I went to a discount store. Muffy got me these cups. Impractical, but I've always wanted gilded glittery goblets. C got me that card holder, which I'm going to use as a mini wallet once I repair the clasp.


Tokyo brother got me a cat teapot!

Tomorrow- Mistral chicken. I'm still thinking of getting myself a new camera. Either my card reader is busted, or my xD card is broken. If it's the latter, I'm no longer bound to Fuji. Yay.

San Francisco Chicken.

Interesting fact about me:

I make famous chicken dishes from San Francisco restaurants. I've never been to these restaurants and probably never will.

Zuni Roasted Chicken (recipe) I've made about five times. It's really good but I've never done the salting three days in advance. I own the cookbook!

This weekend, I'm going to attempt Mistral Chicken (recipe). The restaurant's in the ferry building and I've always wanted to go but no one ever wants to go with me.

San Francisco!

Last weekend I went to San Francisco to visit C! I stayed for less than 48hours. Did you know Southwest flies to SF now, and you get to go through all the BART stations you thought you'd never visit and never wanted to visit? That's right, I went through Colma!

We got Beard Papa's (there's 2 in the same block) and and ate at Straits (which, contrary to popular belief, sucked). Here's a shot of the Moscone Center, you can't see it but they've got an ice skating rink up there on the second floor!

We also walked up to see the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. See once upon a time, there was this homeless man, but he lived rent free (squatted) in SF in a super nice area, like the nicest area ever, and got free coffee at Cafe Trieste, because SF people are nice to homeless men. He spent every day for eight years chronicling the daily activities of this flock of wild parrots. Then he got kicked out of super nice apartment. Eventually, some lady read his book and made it into a film. Then she married him. Now that story makes you either want to live in SF, or run away as quickly as possible...


I forgot what this store sells...I think maybe C said it sold stolen goods from other countries (antiques). But at any rate, I like the sign. You know, it's trying to pull a Red Lobster. Red Lobster has the best sign in the world. No matter what language you speak, you can find Red Lobster because the sign is literally a red lobster. I'm not sure if this is sparkly griffin, glittery mystical animal...I think it actually sells Asian and African stolen goods so it may be scaly kirin.

On Sunday morning we got dim sum at this awesome place near the Ferry building. It was like fancy healthy dim sum served to non-asians. They converted one of the tripe carts you see in real dim sum places to a lettuce cup-maker, and I believe you could get mimosas with your food. I'd recommend it though, its good and safe. And not cheap.

Classes are canceled all week. Don't worry, we'll have to make them up somehow.

I'm not going to go driving around taking pictures of fires (like some people), but I'll show you my sky.

From Mission Bay (my running grounds) looking to the east:


Police guarding gate to Fiesta Island where they're storing horses. You can see the sky's hazy even though we're literally right next to the bay.

The fires don't seem as bad today as the media makes it out to be. I saw the military out today helping out.

No Class!

For the first time in my life, my classes are canceled because of the weather. And here in San Diego, when we say weather, we mean fire.

You don't really notice there's a huge fire north, except that it's on tv and radio, and except for the hazy skies and the ash on the car. Yesterday I actually thought the yellow sky meant thunderstorm and the smoke in the air meant BBQ =P Muffy and I aren't in danger though. I think at its closest it's still at least 15 miles away, plus we live 2 miles from the massive evacuation center.

One thing I learned though. If you have more cats than can fit into your vehicle, you're going to have to choose which ones to save. I saw someone on tv who had this exact problem, only instead of cats, it was horses.

Eating healthy?

So I stopped eating healthy. Pretty much everyone already knew that. I think I officially stopped last May and never resumed. I went to Costco the other day and picked up some DINO NUGGETS. They're the best. They have 0g of trans fat, but I can still feel them in my arteries. I figure I'll just live off of salad, dino nuggets, and the occasional run.

And on a side note, I know I post a lot less interesting stuff than before. That's just the unfortunate nature of blogging - there's only so much you want to share with the world especially since my parents read this blog and all they do is worry =P

A dream

I flew in under the cover of night and saw the Solar Decathlon - solar powered environmentally friendly homes designed by universities around the world on display in the Mall. It was awesome, I'd go, if I were you, except if you lived in DC you've probably got better things to do and a more important life to lead. As with all tourist attractions, we don't visit those closest to us.



I flew in because I wanted to give Muffy a chance at a better life, and I tried, I really did, but perhaps I never had a chance, and I was just too stupid to see the truth, some too happy to see me fail and yet others too embarrassed to acknowledge my presence.

And then I was in the air, back in San Diego, before anyone noticed me missing, and we carry on as if I'd never left.

South Coast Plaza

Artistic shots of South Coast Plaza (big mall in Costa Mesa)



Missing shot - exceptionally well dressed people in front of Claim Jumpers (?!)

Anaheim Sucks

I was supposed to go to LA today, but I detoured into Anaheim instead. You see, you shouldn't rely on me as the driver because things just don't get done. Anyhow, what's there to see in Anaheim if you're a poor law school student? Downtown Disney!

Speaking of saving money, I visited the Grand Californian hotel. It's located in the heart of Downtown Disney with private entrances to the theme park. It's redwood tree-napa valley California themed, ultra fancy except filled with screaming children. I saved money because I took myself on a tour of the hotel, without paying for the $500/night hotel room. This may be the most expensive hotel lobby I've ever entered. Wait till Dubai...

(stolen picture)

Anaheim sucks because you can't do anything except go to Disneyland, and Disneyland's massively overpriced and geared towards the materialistic consumer, but unfortunately I grew up poor and I'm poor now and I'm going to be poor in the future so it's hard for me to justify eating here.

Also, they didn't want me. What's with 60min+ lines for dinner??? And ESPNZone wouldn't even let me in to watch tv! Full of sulking Angels fans. I had dinner at a chain restaurant outside of the park. Fitting for this trip.

One small positive: lego star wars. I downloaded the trial game on my xbox - it's surprisingly good, fun, and multiplayer oriented. Here's Lego darth vadar at the Lego store.

A blast from the past

I had no plans when this weekend started, except I said I'd do something fun. Well, it turns out, I reverted to my pre-law school possibly pre-college form. I got together with some UCSD grad students and played video games and watched anime. It was fun, they put it on the projector in one of the conference room so it's a huge screen.

We played Wii mostly (wii fans). I brought in my copy of Bioshock for a quick demo. Screenshot of Bioshock below: It's a good game, an FPS-RPG(!), solo only though so possibly only worth it as a rental.


On Saturday, met up with the same folk for the cal game + checked out more Wii and the guy's PS3.

Separately my brother came over, so I rented Halo 3 for him. Short game....I'm not really into guns though, but the Halo energy sword is awesome.



I don't get to play video games very often. I own an xbox360 but I've never had a lot (read as any) gaming friends, so these weekends are rare for me.

And Monday....not such a great day, but as always, there's Muffy!

Haven't updated in a while, the reason being I'm doing a lot of stuff I can't discuss online. Basically, September wasn't that great socially, economically, or law-related-ly.

But hopefully I'll do fun stuff this weekend and in October.

Oh and the Lexis rep brought us free Sprinkles cupcakes yesterday =)

Conversations last week:

Landlord: I'd prefer a female tenant so she can play with my daughter.
Me: (thinking) No child touches Muffy!

Friend: Let's go to IHOP.
Me: I haven't been in 10 years because they served me food that came out of a can. It retained the can shape and can stripes.
Friend + dad: IHOP is really good now.
Me: (after ordering) My salsa and ham cubes can out of a can. Pancakes. Must stick to pancakes.

Friend: What are you going to do after you graduate?
Me: My cat and I are moving to Michigan. We're going to live in C's closet. We'll sneak in under the cover of silent frozen night, pick the lock, throw out whatever's in the closet, and move in. It's like adverse possession except my cat and I can summon the power of gravity and become immovable.
Friend: Can I come?

Muffy: Wake up you can't go to bed yet.
Me: Since when does a cat dictate my bedtime.
Muffy: (vomits all over my bed) Wake up and play with me.

I also discovered Target now has knock offs of my favorite jeans. When you're my size, it's hard to find anything that fits, so I buy my jeans at Uniqlo, a Japanese store with one US outlet in New York. They're $40, fit well and look good. Well, Target now sells them for $14....Why don't they copy Sevens? I mean I try hard to pass my sub-$100 jeans off as somewhat designer, and here Target just tells the world, hey she possibly bought the same pair (they're good knock offs) at our store!

Back in the Bay

I took the propeller plane back to the Bay Area to visit my parents. We checked out the "new to me" mall in San Francisco! And it's awesome and beautiful but Southern California still has better shopping and more people who actually care about how they dress. You see, when you're in SF, you know you're there because the locals hobble about in drab sweats and parkas. And I care because I'm insanely shallow and materialistic. Sometimes I think I should dye my hair blond to better conform to the stereotype. I'd be that girl in Legally Blond. Cuz if I could I'd dye my cat pink and carry her around in jeweled bag. But anyhow the folks in SF, I think they eat really well.


Oh, and taking the last flight out of San Jose isn't a great idea when your flight gets delayed. Makes it hard to get picked up on the other end. And you come home to a cat that won't stop meowing or rubbing her slimy body against you. 48 hours later, the frantic meowing continues. See, thats why I can't dye her pink. She'd scream cat abuse and the stay at home wannabe psychiatrists will label me a serial killer.*

*If you exhibit strange behaviour towards any animal, it's a sign you're a sociopath. So say the Internet folk.

The World Moves On Without Me

I have a lot of spare time this semester. I'm trying to find a school-term job, but it's not working out that well, either because no one wants to hire a third year, or because somebody's talking trash about me again behind my back. I guess that's networking for you.

So anyhow, here's a list of what's going through my mind this week.

I watched an episode of Heroes and thought it was good!

I filled out and turned in my moral character application. I think I have 14 references down. I hope everyone turns in their form...I want to say I can depend on 14 people, some friends, some work supervisors.

Started reading up for the MPRE.

I started looking for a place to move. I'm unsure as to whether I should/can stay in San Diego post-bar, so I'm also unsure as to whether I should move, where to, and the terms of the lease.

Would like to attend the Sychuan Pow-wow, but I'm not in town this weekend.

And ya, I'm looking for a permanent job. I'm not going to discuss the process this year.

Visiting my parents this weekend. On one of those small propeller planes.

Finally, "My son is almost 30 and won't leave home." If your parents can afford to keep the entire family intact at home, and your mom cooks for you and does your laundry and buys you new toys, and your parents indulge your every whim, and all you need to do in exchange is never date, never bring over friends, never get married...would you do it? It seems really foreign, but it's essentially what my grandmother does to my dad, it's what we do to our pets...

Labor Day

My brother came over for Labor Day. He didn't have air con in LA, I don't have it here. I prepared a no-cook meal for ridiculously hot weather. It's guacamole, tabouli w/couscous, grape salad, and grape jello in a martini glass.


I've also got tons left over for consumption next week. It's my tribute to Sudan...I watched the movie about the Lost Boys, and they all eat with their hands. So this is kind of like that, except I forgot the pita bread for the couscous.

We got a fancy KFC. I'm still not going in, but I like their new branding. We also have an ultra fancy Jack in the Box in another part of town. Some believe it was the very first one. It's got a fireplace and table service!

Muffy's Hot

The heat wave I brought with me from DC never left. It only intensified. Today it's close to 100, high humidity, and people in LA lost power. Inside it's disgustingly hot and outside the roads and beaches are packed with overheated out of towners.

But Muffy seems to enjoy the heat. Kind of. She sits in the window against the morning sun.

But later, she likes to lie on the ground against the wall. I bought 2 granite tiles from Home Depot and put them in the fridge. I thought she would like to lie on its cooled surface. But she's scared of the tiles and no amount of smashing her body on the cold cold tiles will negate the fear.

So I did the next best thing. I washed her. She can cool evaporatively. Here's her in my tub pre-water. And that's my shampoo in the back, not hers. She uses a special cat shampoo that makes her smell "baby fresh."


And here's Muffy post-washing.

The New Purse

School started last week, and as a reward for making it through it all, I bought myself a Coach purse. Yes, it's from the coach outlets, and yes, it's probably last year's model. But I finally have a name brand purse.

I stole this picture. It's dark red suede, medium sized, $135. I had to spray suede protector all over it.

I've wanted a red purse for a while now to go with my red shoes. Red's a good happy color to have, and my god I'll need a lot of happiness to make it through another year of school. So far on the calendar: classes full of people I know but don't care to associate with (I prefer classes full of people I don't know), listening to everyone talk about the empty awesomeness of their own lives, and running the gauntlet known as the job search. Oh and it's still hot and humid. I call global warming.

My Summer Vacation

My summer vacation, the time between work and school, will last five (5) days. And it's five days because I don't have class this Monday.

What am I doing in those five days? Well, it happens that I left DC's hottest month for San Diego's hottest month, and like in DC, I have no air conditioning. Unlike DC, I can't take refuge indoors because most businesses don't have serious air conditioning for the two weeks of heat wave we get each year. Also, my car's air conditioning sucks because it's European.

So I'm not doing much. I stay indoors. I try to not think about school or how this moment right now marks the end of the height of my legal career (that's right, I peaked while in school). I try to not acquire items because I'm poor. I try to not eat to much because I can't exercise because I'm too cheap to spring for a gym membership and because it's too hot. Sadly, due to an overactive brain, I haven't accomplished any of those tasks very well.

For example, I've already acquired shoes I do not need, worried about school and employment, and made a batch of chicken marsala and mashed potatoes with (gasp) real butter and consumed it all while watching an Arrested Development marathon. That's right, I'm on season 2.

BUT I also made my DC collage.... Costco has a great deal on printing photos. They use Snapfish, but if you try to buy the same pictures on Snapfish's site, Snapfish charges a bunch more. And Costco gets it to you the next day. I had this great idea to plaster my bedroom wall with pictures of all the places I've been to, but then realized I got the idea from the US Holocaust Museum, and also, I'm not that artistic. It would look like some type of compartmentalized robot storage facility.

I also assembled my Muffy puzzle. I've got no way to mount this on the wall since my lease doesn't allow me to use nails. One day, I'll print it in giant size and frame the plasma tv with Muffy bookends.


I also got a plant. Actually this is 3 plants. And Muffy in the background. These plants only bloom once, and then die. I read they make babies though, so if that's true, well, you already know your Christmas present.

On the way to Michigan

I left for Michigan this morning. It's a five day trip by car, with stops in Utah, Denver, Nebraska, and Iowa. I'm going to keep track of this trip, and my time in business school in a new blog: http://thecrispinblog.blogspot.com.

Here's yesterday's group shot of us all in the San Diego apartment. Only the big totoro came with me.

Muffy Puzzle

C left today for Ann Arbor.

In the meantime, here's a Muffy Puzzle.

Cuyamaca & Julien

About 1hr east of San Diego, there's a mountain resort type town and a lake. We previously visited Julien in the winter and picked up an incredibly good apple pie. We decided to check it out in the summer and do some hiking in Cuyamaca state park.

A few years ago, a fire ravaged the forest, so all you can see on the hike are burned trees. That means there's no shade. Because we're in year xx of a dust bowl sized drought, the ground is just loose desert dust. Oh, and it was 90 degrees and we hiked 4miles round trip on a rocky and uneven path.
Ate lunch at the "spring." The spring had dead bees and the thing I fear most...a butterfly wing.


Close up of a burned up tree.


Afterwards we picked up another pie at Julien and came back! I don't recommend visiting Julien, it's an hour drive for a very small one street town, full of stores that sold things they ordered off of ebay. But it is important to remember the sheer size of San Diego county, and all the Indian reservations between here and there.

Things I missed about Socal

1) Beaches. Mission Beach, packed on a not really warm Monday afternoon. We also made it to Coronado beach for the sunset!

2) Sprinkles cupcakes! This is the one in Newport. I got chocolate coconut flavor =) And the line out the door....normal.

3) Good shopping, beautiful malls. Fashion Island (Newport Beach)'s koi. Not pictured - insanely rich beautiful women with their insanely rich and spoiled children.


4) Same mall, beautiful storefronts and perfect landscaping.

Looking Backwards & Forward

One of my co-clerks called this the worst summer he ever had. I thought I had a great summer. I guess the only thing that could make it better, was if I was getting paid $3000/week. Then we could actually go to real restaurants, good parties, and have a life outside of work. In fact, everything that went wrong, from the broken AC to my failed happy hour plan came as a direct result of not working for a giant law firm. But that's not for everyone. Here the work was rewarding, I got along with everyone, and DC has free museums. And next summer will be the worst summer when I'm studying for the bar.

I summarized my summer in one picture:


And the things I dreamed about here:

BTW: I hiked a mile to the dunkin donuts this morning, mainly because I've emptied out my fridge already and because I hear about their wonderful coffee. It's really not that great. I think I should have stopped at one of the many overpriced organic coffee places on the way.

I leave tonight. Only the reality of the job search and impending bills await me at home.

Last Weekend

What do you do on your last weekend in DC? Well, I didn't really do anything. Not for lack of things to do, but rather, I think the heat finally got to me.

Yes, on week 10, I decided it's too hot/humid for activity. To be fair, it was an especially hot and humid day, that terminated today with 4 hours of thunder/threatened rain + some actual rain, and my apartment (for unknown reasons) was also super hot.

Yesterday I dragged myself far enough to visit Dunkin Donuts, only to find that they don't really sell donuts any more, and the line was out the door. So then I went to Whole Foods to do my grocery shopping for the week and get a pink homer simpson style donut. I've finally realized (that also took me 10 weeks) that Whole Foods is my most metro-accessible functioning grocery store. I visited three whole foods before I realized this. Unfortunately, Whole Foods is also the most expensive grocery store on the planet except for maybe bristol farms. I actually picked my tomatoes by price. Also, it's impossible to buy bread or animals without talking to the bread/animal person, and I don't do that kind of thing. So I settled for slightly moldy bread (whole foods bread is by definition so fresh mold grows instantly), and random packaged sausage. Oh, Whole Foods doesn't sell donuts either.

On week 10, I finally made a meal to last myself the entire week. My coworkers would have been proud. It consisted of all the things left in the fridge piled into a pan + the whole foods sausages. My last week of lunches will be spaghetti w/sausage mixed with a pound of frozen spinach and dinner will be couscous drowned in tomatoes, leftover frozen chicken strips, and parsley. I've mastered microwave cooking.

Today I made it as far as Union Station, where I ate and hung out at the bookstore. I pretended I was in Tokyo hanging out at shinjuku/takeshimaya. The illusion worked because in Tokyo and in DC, the rain confined me to the bookstore in the train station. However, Tokyo doesn't have crazy security guards following you around, thinking you're going to steal a magazine and stuff it into your super small purse or down your super short skirt.

I really admire a bunch of professors, judges, and legal professions, but you don't get a chance to see those people in San Diego. However, this is DC.

Work sent me to the American Constitution Society's Convention yesterday. It's like the ideological opposite of the Federalist society, and they had insanely smart panelists. I think the majority of speakers clerked for at least one supreme court justice. Now I didn't say the panelists were engaging....I only note their superior legal intellect. Some of them are actually assholes to non-Yale/Harvard grads, but that doesn't really matter when everyone at the convention (save me) graduated from Yale or Harvard. Also, this was a con law convention. That means I saw the author of my con law textbook, the author of my treatise, and my con law professor. It also means attendees had some type of real interest in con law litigation. I'd have that interest if I had any real chance of employment as a con law lawyer (and I'd like to), but item #41 I learned this summer: I don't. Null. Zero. Let me clarify. By con law, I don't mean first amendment law or basic civil liberties stuff. I mean representing people in Gitmo, working in voter election law, or in one guy's case, writing the patriot act. That's pretty amazing stuff.

All the same though, I really wish I was at Comic-Con instead.

Monuments are Monumental

As our loyal readers will know, I was visiting in DC for a few days last weekend. It was great fun, and I took many pictures, many of our nation's great memorials. I was going to make a big post with a comprehensive memorial tour, and maybe I still will. However tonight I was scanning in pictures from the album chronicling my grandparents' honeymoon. I'm not sure exactly when that was, but more than 50 years ago, when everyone still had cars like this (that's my grandfather looking under the hood):
Anyway, they drove across the US, and one of their stops was Washington DC. Here is proof that Monuments are the same forever, as they should be.

Front of Lincoln Memorial now:

Front of Lincoln Memorial then:


Lincoln now:

Lincoln then:


Washington Monument now:


Washington Monument then: