Are we dating ourselves by quoting "The Big Lebowski"?

Someone posed this very important question today. I think the answer is yes.
Discuss.

Red Shirt Guy Strikes again

Hello friends,
I'm up later on a Wednesday night than I should be, but I'm feeling some after-dark inspiration! I should get up tomorrow morning at 5:30 to fit my yoga practice in before class, but I'm having a hard time feeling good about that right now. I lost some of the intensity in my practice last week and this week. I know there are ebbs and flows to the practice and my energy level, etc, and I'm trying to be ok with that. But I don't want to get so ok with it that I just get really lazy. At the same time there are a lot of new things coming at me still, and the daily practice is also relatively new, so I've got to give myself adjustment time.
Speaking of adjustment time, I need to give it to myself in general. For some reason, I tend to assume transitions will be totally uneventful for me. I have this idea that they should be easy. When they're not (and they rarely are) I get annoyed and impatient. The truth is I've been through a lot of big changes in the last year, and a lot of physical and mental transitions in the last 4 months. I haven't been giving myself the space to feel lonely and out of place--I get impatient with feeling that way and I resent it, especially when I know I've got plenty of awesome people in my life around the world, and concentrated in the Cities. I've been resenting starting all over again.
But, things are going pretty well for me right now in this exact moment. I feel like I'm meeting more people, I'm really enjoying school--in all I'm feeling fairly balanced.
Enough about me, the only reason you're all still reading is because you want to know what red shirt guy did this time!
He sits in the front row in contracts (and plays solitaire for a lot of class...) in the middle of the foreign LLM students. On Monday during class, he accidentally spilled half his water bottle on the Swedish girl who sits next to him (and on all her stuff). She's staring in shock at her soaking notebook and books, he looks at her, shrugs and says "sorry" and goes back to typing. She starts sopping up the table in front of her with a tissue and then laying all her wet materials in a row on the carpet behind her. Red shirt guy never offers to get her paper towels, or help her in any way.
I think this incident is a window into red shirt guy's psyche. Some suggest he was home schooled and socially inept as a result. Others think it's part of his strategy to take out his competitors in the class. Someone else suggested that the front row represents Europe (because of all the exchange students), and then said "I think we all know who Germany is..." Hilarious. I thought it would've been funnier if he had spilled on the Polish girl and then it would be like the invasion of Poland....no one laughed (well, I laughed, but I don't think that counts).
Now it's actually time for bed.
Peace,
Lauren

Nash Vegas Celebrity Sighting

Hello friends, I had my first Nash Vegas, country music star celebrity sighting this morning. (I keep typing "citing" and then erasing it--that's because I'm writing a paper right now in which I have to cite after every sentence, but I digress).
Crossover star Leann Rimes (is that how you spell her name?) showed up at the place I was brunching with the Vandy Law Brunch Bunch this morning. Pandamonium did not ensue.
I have a cold.

Local Hooligans

Hello friends, I'm writing to you on a Sunday evening, enjoying the delightful twilight time. Soon, I will have dinner.
Some local hooligans tp-ed my car today. Those darn kids. I live right by a small liberal arts college and we have college kids all around us. On the weekend, there's a lot of "whoo-ing."
I thought the tp was funny. They even used 2-ply! If you're going to tp, I guess you may as well do it with the softest stuff you can find.
Here's a picture:
My roommate and I cleaned up the mess and I went inside for a while. I came back out and someone left two pages from a notebook on my car that said "DO NOT PARK HERE." Well, we just went from fun to really annoying. I asked some people who live in that house if they were the culprits, but they denied it. Liars! It's a public street, they don't get to tell me where to park!
I hit some downtown bars of Friday. Country music can be fun! I've decided to try my best to like it. Someone had a shirt on that said "if you don't know 7 songs by (some guy), then you shouldn't be here." I think that shirt referred to me.
Hugs to all!
Lauren

Fall has sprung!

Hello friends, I'm happy to report that Nashville is no longer so unpleasantly hot. It happened overnight! Today it's a sunny 78 degrees, with a slight chill in the air that promises colder weather to come...
I may change my mind later on, but at this point I'm excited to experience a little cold weather after being in extreme heat and humidity since December of last year (except for my brief Himalayan interlude). The only downside is that it was to cold to do yoga on the porch this morning. I had to move it inside.
In yoga news, I did a headstand by just lifting my feet into the air, not kicking off the ground, for the first time last week! I've been trying to do this for a while.
Here's a video of a guy teaching the headstand, but it's the only one I could find that actually shows what I can do now. It doesn't come till about 1:50 into the video.

The girl in front of me in class today was looking at a gossip column that showed a picture of Britney Spears' unmentionable feminine area. Can I sue her for exposing me to material that caused me mental distress? I don't know. We haven't learned that yet. Things to look forward to.
I'm really enjoying law school so far, for all the reasons I thought I would. We even talked about Seinfeld today in torts. They're teaching us about this:


On a different note, I'm noticing an inordinate number of men wearing pink shirts walking from their cars to the law and business schools in the morning. Discuss.
Oh, and George, thanks for your comment! I laughed out loud.

Does watching People's Court count as studying for law school?

The answer to this question on Thursday was an emphatic: YES!
People's Court helped me analyze tortious claims involving negligence, liability and helped me appreciate the role contracts play in our daily lives. Look at the stuff I've learned to throw around and only two weeks in law school!
I went to my brother's house on Thursday. He was having a party for watching "football." He made some diagrams and whatnot for me before the game started so I'd understand what was happening. I ended up socializing for most of the game anyways.
Tonight I'm hitting the town with some law school buddies, venturing off my usual home to law school to home route.
Oh, and for the record, my underwear was in a hamper that was accessible to the dog. I have since moved it.
Nothing else to report!
Hugs,
Lauren

Red Shirt Guy

Hello friends, sorry it's been so long since my last post. Now that I'm starting to get into a groove with this law school stuff, I think I'll be able to put in a little more time blogging (yes, it definitely can be used as a verb).
I'm happy to report that I'm actually enjoying law school this week. Last week at this time I definitely could not have said the same. My midweek meltdown went something like this:
Waaaaaa, I think I made the wrong choice and I don't want to be here.
What caused said meltdown, you ask?
Well, the first week was extremely overwhelming. I had 5 hours of class on Tuesday, and about 6 hours of homework to prepare for my 4 hours of class on Wednesday. Yikes. Luckily, this week I could anticipate the Tuesday/Wednesday shit storm and prepare for it.
My classes this semester:
-Torts (not the kind you bake, but that might be preferable)
-Legal Writing
-Regulatory State--the role of administrative agencies and bureaucracy in the creation of law--statutes and regulations--believe it or not this is my favorite class so far
-contracts
I've been meeting some nice people and some people I'm indifferent to, but isn't that to be expected?
Computers in the classroom: a new development since I was in college. I've decided to fear using new technology where old technology did me just fine and I'm taking my notes by hand. This seems to be working for me so far.
My objection to computers in the classroom: I have to watch everyone else surf the web all through class. It's really distracting. Facebook, shoe shopping, news reading, and today, the girl in front of me was reading "Advice for 1Ls" and law blogs. I've got some advice for her: PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS!!!
On to Red Shirt Guy. I'm afraid this story is not going to be as interesting as all the build up to it. During orientation a professor was giving a lecture on the difficulty in interpreting the law even when it seems straight-forward. She asked everyone with a red shirt to stand up. We went around the room "why did you stand up, your shirt has stripes." "The stripes are red." "I don't think that's a red shirt, it's a striped shirt." Then comes red shirt guy. He refuses to stand. She asks why he won't stand and he replies, in essence, "'cause I don't wanna." Then the professor tells him to leave. He refuses. She tells him he better not be in her class. It just seems to me that he was being arrogant. What's he got to prove? What's the big deal with standing up??? In any case, he will forever be known to our class as....red shirt guy. I guess we couldn't think of anything more colorful to name him (ha! I laugh at my own little joke).
People are already freaking out about the exams and asking professors about them. This strikes me as a bit premature. It's only the second week of class. I'm trying not to care too much about all that. I must focus on the task at hand: the hundreds and hundreds of pages of reading assigned each week. And it's not undergrad reading--I actually have to pay attention to it and learn from it. Sigh.
My home situation is really good. I like my roommate and her doggie, although he ate 2 pairs of my underwear. I figure, at least I get a funny story out of it. It's way funnier than if he ate my shirt. Now that I'm learning some lawyering skills I'm asking myself if I can hold my roommate liable for damages to aforementioned underwear...
I wish I could tell ya'll that Nashville is a great town, but the truth is I don't really know if it is or not. So far, I don't get out much. I did go to a party this weekend. I also hung out with my new sister-in-law, which was really fun.
I read a case for my torts class that took place at the Nicollet Hotel in the 1960s! How I miss fair Minnesota. And I'm very upset about missing the Minnesota fair for yet another year. That just isn't right.
Hugs to all! I'm glad you're still checking the page--I'll keep writing!
Lauren