Ladies night

Its funny how girls get so excited to have a "girls-only" night and then spend the entire evening talking about their guys the second they walk out the door. The conversation gets more interesting as the evening progresses and as the alcohol bottles are steadily emptied of their contents.

After my fourth glass of wine, I excitedly exclaimed, "guess what I am!" as I picked up a cork from the counter and put it in my mouth. I yelled back the answer before I could take any guesses, "I'm a bottle of wine!".

Between six uninhibited ladies, everything that was touched was either spilled or dropped or chugged. Booties were shaken, asses slapped, and boobs the center of many discussions. I tired out early because I insisted on running eight miles before the partying binge- keeps me out of trouble....

Why the 45 minute drive from Bremerton to Bainbridge sucks:

You start your journey on a happy note inspired, of course, by Corona and end it blisteringly sober in your dark driveway, alone, at 1 am.

Bye-bye Pet Rocks

It's almost May- that means my impending adulthood is almost another year closer.

I think its time I begin to discard my old college ways and start to seriously think about becoming a more mature adult, who is also a nicer person.

This means that I will no longer be able to:

*Drive vehicles without pants
*Spill pieces of every meal on the floor
*Shake my booty in public to music in my head (at least when someone is looking)
*Wish I could be a ninja turtle
*Eat three candy bars a day because I read somewhere that chocolate is an anti-oxidant
*Dance on bars
*Wear shirts inside-out when they are dirty
*Use my van as a closet
*Take the last granola bar and put the empty box back because I'm too lazy to smush it down.
*Take my special blanket to sleepovers- wait, I can still go to sleepovers right?
*Do my special "happy" dance when I get excited

I'm taking the 12 step program to adulthood. So, I'll probably start with my candy bar goal by gradually limiting my chocolate intake to two bars a day. After a year, I'll see if I'm ready to tackle another childish habit.

Hiku

Who orders ceasar salad at a mexican restaurant?....besides me. But it was delicious and I can pretend it was healthy. I never give in to social expectations. I always give in to the whim of my desire.

I think this is because I was loved too much as a baby.

Wedding Crashers

I went to my cousin's wedding this weekend. It's a strange feeling to witness the people I grew up with pass through different adult "marker-points". Years ago we were playing Beauty and the Beast, and now she is a totally different person- a person that I don't really know. I'm bad at staying in touch with family...sigh.

When I think of my cousin, I remember the time we deliberately skipped school so to await the arrival of the movie Gladiator at the video rental store. it was the first day released to stores and we were going to be the first people in our city to rent it- because watching it in the theater 7 times wasn't enough.

The wedding ceremony/reception was small and short- but it was alot of fun. My boyfriend and I made sure that there would not be any left over alcohol (that would be just aweful). I think sometime after glass of wine two- I passed by the female minister and told her she was a good "marrier". Being the caring older sister, I made sure my under-age sister got her share of French wine.



I was shocked to see my Uncle Brian wearing pants for the first time since I've known him- aren't weddings wonderful like that? I warned my boyfriend about my Uncle's mean tickling tactics. A lot of laughing was done and alot of pictures were taken. As my boyfriend said,"we maxed out on our monthly "couple" picture quota"- lol.

My cousin's wedding cake put an entirely new spin on the term "caked donut".

Buyer's remorse

I just made a $30,000 purchase and all I got was 120 hours/week of studing.

Since I have known for sure that three more years of school are looming in my near future, the topic has risen to my mind quite frequently lately.

My top choice for law school rejected me weeks ago yet feels compelled to rub it in my face by sending me promotional material with the tagline "picture yourself here". Bastards.....

Studying (ugh, I'll have to start doing that again) a map of the campus where my spontaneity/freedom/life will be held ransom for the next three years I began to feel trapped. Lying ahead of me are piles and piles of reading assignments. The school owns every second of your conscious day and consumes every subconscious thought of your night. Before being a bootilicious dancing diva, an foreign affairs crazed nerd, or an urban adventurer you are FIRST a library-bound student. Library bound: the state of being held in an unbreakable bondage between the interior walls of a library.

You know what I love? Law students apparently aren't too old for pop quizzes. Pop quizzes are something you assigned your five year old brother during an ugly game of "school". Pop quizzes are the worst nightmare of people like Zack and Screech from Saved by the Bell (insert nervous laugh)- not an vital part of law student curriculum.

What if I got to invent the school environment? First thing I would do is to make the "study lounge" live up to its name with an assorted offering of alcoholic beverages and live musical performers. Since schools benefit from having well performing students and since students are always fed the cheesy line "school is your job", I would make it so that students got paid by the hour for studying... how is that for a class president campaign platform?

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Devil being my brother, Joey. I took him to the Seattle Science Center to see Deep Sea 3-D at the Imax theater. We had quite an adventure....

I THOUGHT that I remembered being able to walk to the Science Center from the ferry- knowing that it would be a long walk. I figured: its under the Space Needle so just follow the Space Needle and you would eventually get there. Needless to say, there are a couple factors I did not take into consideration:

1) The space needle is short in comparison to ginormous sky scrapers that crowd out the rest of the sky
2) 7-year old boys have to eat and poop- alot and quite often
3) 7- year old boys want to stop at every store along the way

After a couple minutes of feeding, buying trinkets, and getting lost, a cab ride sounded tempting.

Above: Joey mimicking a mummy at Ye Ol' Curiosity Shop

We finally got to our target destination in time to get drenched in line, find a vendor that sells soft pretzels (because, ugh, Joey wasn't hungry for anything else....) and eat in front of the water display (water makes such a great display, since we never get to see rain in Seattle).



The show was amazing. The cinematography= beautiful, the film shots = incredible, the subject mattter = other-worldly. We had to wear special glasses to see the six story (!!) screen in 3-D. Its amazing how creatures and the environment are so symbiotic. The film really drove home that we are all co-dependent on each other. This I have known for years. In college my roomate and I would regularly co-eat Snickers bars. My special talent was being able to eat the entire chocolate coating and leave the nougat and caramel intact for my roomate to finish. See....symbiosis.....

My favorite part of the film was watching the sea-turtles- you really feel like you are right there. In general, sea creatures are very violent. Its different watching them fight and eat each other in a real video as opposed to in Little Nemo!

Paheli Pyaar

Before my current boyfriend, famous Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan was my only love.

Unlike typical cases, Bollywood's extensive typecasting of Shah Rukh Khan throughout his film career has been the most beautiful thing. Shah Rukh Khan knows how to milk his audience by playing the most adorable, compassionate yet stubborn, devotedly love-struck character ever to be viewed on the screen.

I remember when I saw my first Shah Ruh Khan (SRK) film. My freshman year RA- as obsessed with Indian culture as I was- introduced me to and guided me through the mysteriously captivating world of Bollywood. She was obsessed with SRK and thought he was the hottest thing on screen. I didn't understand this infatuation right away- he isn't eye-catchingly gorgeous. But sit attentatively through a movie or two and you can't help but be won over by his on screen charm.

In every role, SRK plays the man that every woman deep down wants. No, he's not the wild, macho, overtly sexy fantasy man that women often lust after. He's the real man- the obtainable man. Often, his flaw is that he is overly devoted to the target of his affection. He is sweet, romantic, gentle, and sacrficing. He has conviction and lives strongly by ethics. SRK's character is the kind who takes care of his parents and wishes to serve them. He is funny and dorky- but always has a gift or talent that brings him worldly success. He wins all people over with his confidence and charm.

And of course the kicker is that he will do anything to be with the one he loves. This is usually the source of drama and the entire point of the film as no Indian film could be complete without the necessary obstacle that wedges itself between two would-be lovers.

The love drama that defines the Bollywood film cannot be replicated in Hollywood. This is due to the simlple fact that American men seldom cry in films. The male Bollywood character is free to express emotions in any and all intensities. Just because they can cry, however, doesn't mean they all pull it off. SRK is so genuine that he is believable- this is not true for many current Bollywood actors.

The trademark of SRK would have to be two specific facial expressions that carry over to each of his films. One is his lovable ear to ear grin, the other is his tragic "sorrow" face- ahhhh.

Above: One of his famous faces with his most compeling co-star, Kajol

The more I think about the qualities that I love in SRK's characters, the more I realize that I have managed to find them in the real world. I am very lucky to have found a real life SRK in my boyfriend. If life was anything like a hindi film, we would be romping somewhere far off in a flower field, windblown by colorful scarves in perfect rhythm with the up and down beats of a cheesy love song.

Shah Rukh Khan: the curiously strong Indian actor

The idealist in me has a few word to say

Lately people have been expressing a lot of hatred towards illegal immigrants. All the hateful lashing out really bothers me.

I bet many of us, if faced with the same situation and opportunity would find ourselves doing the exact same thing. In fact, I have heard many people tell me, in all seriousness, that they would illegally run away to Canada to avoid a draft. Hypocrites......

Immigrants are people too. Not all laws stand for justice or truth- so the argument that because an action is "illegal" does not mean that it is wrong. Maybe there are more "ethically correct" alternative choices that people should make in their fight to improve their life situation- but many people are alone in their fight for basic survival needs. Not everyone has a government that is trying to help them and its not their fault.

We become so blinded by our own prejudice, stereotypes, and fear that all we can do is hate. I read a wonderful book called "Hate Work" in college. I believe the author is dead-on when she highlights the different causes for hate in our society. One of the biggest sources of social hatred is fear. Reacting out agains the immigrant situation through our fears that tell us immigrants are taking all our jobs away from us and undermining the foundation of our government and economy parallels our pre-emptive strike against Iraq (the recent one- not the one in 1992....).

President Bush's Administration defied UN resolutions and pre-emptively attacked a country out of the fear that the country had weapons of mass destruction. When we let our fear and our paranoia turn into hatred... people hurt, communities hurt, and the globe suffers.

Maybe illegal immigrants are wrong, maybe they are hurting our country- or maybe they are helping our country so that we don't have to start exporting hard-labor jobs (for which there is a shortage). The point is to not be guided by blind hatred and fear.

Personally, in a globalizing world where our survival increasingly depends on the health of other nations- we need to start seeing each other as members of the global community and not segregate ourselves by nationalism. Nationalism brought many good things throughout the 20th century (identity, cohesion of groups of like minded people, strength)- but we can also attribute it to factionalization, each World War, and pretty much every violent skirmish/war from South Asia, to the Middle East, to Eastern Europe to South Africa.

End of Ramble.

Have you had your daily glass of whine?

I don't only abuse computers, I sit on children:


I hate computers. They never do what they are supposed to do. Of course, there is always an amount of human error to be factored in....but even on the off-chance that I do something completely correct, they still spaz out on me. What's the point of having a computer if you just want to drop kick it into the face of the nearest Geek-Squad Associate 75% of the day? Is it possible for humans to get a computer virus? Cause I think I'm infected.

When it comes to technology- I just don't have patience. I don't want to feel that my "tools" are running my life (if evolution is true, then I think those that remained monkeys are really the intelligent ones- the "finger-toe" is still the most clever tool out there....). Freshman year of college I threw my cell phone out of the fourth floor of my all girls dorm. I really, really wanted to destroy it- to take its life. It landed in the grass (duh, the building was surrounded by grass)- dang things can't even break properly when you want them to.

I was told by an IT guy at work that computers don't get along with anything capable of emotion. At first I thought he was being a smart ass. But, I see he was trying to teach me a lesson in his own little, unimposing way.

What is it about the unrefined wisdom of highschool IT guys that always makes me feel stupid.

IT guy (looking on google earth): "I'm looking for Russian spies in Antartica"
me: "Russia isn't as close to the North pole as people think."

yikes...geography wasn't a requirement for political science majors.......obviously!

Burrito Love

If this poster involved dialogue, it might be something like this:

"Eat a burrito from Taco del Mar and I'll love you"

OR

Male: "I'm so glad we decided to take our relationship to the next level"

Female: "I agree"

Male (looking at burrito) "I will never go back to pre-stuffed burritos again..."

Scales of Just-ass

Recently, I sat in on a night law class. I am not sure why admitted students are encouraged to do this. You might think it would dispell fears of applicants who read the book "One L" by Scott Turow upon the advise of ill-willed relatives. It doesn't.

These are the only reasons I can imagine why Admissions staff would invite pre-students to sit in on a class:

1) To weed out the ones who like torture from the ones who don't.
2) To scare pre-students into actually doing their required summer reading/assignments.
3) To encourage students to study art history.

The class I sat in on was "Civil Procedure"- sounds innocent enough. It was like walking into a foreign language class. Terms like "comparative nucelus of operative fact" and "ancillary jurisprudence" where thrown around like putty in dialogue between teacher and student. I was in a bad science fiction movie with jibber jabber like that, plus the repeated use of the ominous phrase "Rule 14"- sounds scary doesn't it? EVERYONE had their laptops open in front of them for note-taking. My pen and pad of paper made me feel like a technological caveman.

Ok, the truth is that it wasn't so bad. I was excited to set foot in a classroom again and I'm looking forward to the challenge of grasping new concepts. I love the college classroom atmosphere and am thrilled to become part of a student body again after a year of real-life work and responsibility.

When I found out that law students don't write papers, except for in legal writing class, I almost cried from let down. It feels so good to confidently take up an argument and find ways to cleverly defend it. Yes, I am a nerd...

Sitting in the back row, looking at all the laptop screens in front of me, I decided that law classes serve another purpose. Law class is a chance for students to discover how many times within an hour that they can win Solitaire....