Merry Christmas, Everyone

What a week! Over the past few days I've finished exams, been to New York, and driven back down to NC. 

Before exams started, Kelsey gave me a few "exam supplies" consisting of a bottle of gummy vitamins and a football "stress-ball" that you squeeze in order to release tension.

 Last day of exams. This is the football. It served its purpose well, until it exploded. 

Not sure it was designed for law school exams.

The gummy vitamins were similarly emptied.

Immediately after my final paper was turned in, Kels and I hopped on a megabus to NYC to see Newsies. I was worried that the show would disappoint me because I am a huge fan of the movie, but for the most part I thought it was really fantastic. The guy who played the Christian Bale role was especially good.

Kels took better pictures with her phone, but I was too impatient to wait for those.

After 25 hours in NYC, we made it down to NC in time for Rachel and Kels to get a pair of matching Christmas Eve pajamas. Rachel made me promise that I would not put the picture that I took up on Facebook. I said I would not.

For the record, this is not Facebook.

Merry Christmas!

Exams, Round 3

Exams are going well, but they are... exams. Not finished until Saturday. Until then, here, have some pictures from less exam-y times that I have been meaning to post for the past few days:

Kels had never been to the Jefferson Memorial and she also needed to run 6 miles as preparation for her half-marathon. Jefferson and back is 7 miles, but I told her it was 6. Efficiency!

Goo arranged for a sing-through of Jesus Christ Superstar for Noah's birthday.

Guess who Noah was.

No, really, guess.

Happy Birthday, Noah.

I got to be Pilate.

Afterwards Goo had the entire "cast" over to her house for pot roast prepared three different ways (if one roast fails, the others will live on!). 

One exam, paper, one Journal Note, and one teaching portfolio to go.

Performance on the first two exams was a solid "somewhere between an A and a F" which is to say that even feeling pretty good about the exams gives no indication as to actual performance.

Happy Samiclaus Day

Since housemate Jeff is Dutch, and Swiss, and occasionally British, we get to experience lots of new and exciting cultural traditions. This Sunday it was Samiclaus day (Sinterklaas Day for the Dutch, as Jeff explained it), a day best known to me due to the essay by David Sedaris in which he explains that the Dutch think that Santa Claus is the former bishop of Turkey who summers in Spain and arrives with an entourage of "six to eight black men" and who may or may not kick naughty Dutch children. Jeff pretty much agreed that this version of the story is correct.

What I did not know from the David Sedaris essay was that on Samiclaus/Sinterklaas day it is traditional in Swiss homes to have something called a raclette meal. The raclette involves a special grill with slots underneath the heating element to place slices of special raclette cheese that crisp instead of melt when subjected to broiling. This cheese is then placed on top of tiny boiled potatoes, chicken, peppers, brussel sprouts, and other things- some of which are grilled on top of the heating element of the raclette machine. 

It is indeed a magical meal. For his generosity in setting this up and sharing his traditions with us, I am almost certain that Jeff will not be kicked nor almost-kicked by the former bishop of Turkey this year.

After dinner, people where kind enough to help me with my final project for negotiations by reading a case that I had prepared and acting it out. Since it is finals week (well, week one of two), all emphasis is on finals projects and studying (mostly for evidence).

Monday night I had dinner with Nell, my friend who was with me in China. We talked about how law school was a lot like just spending three years on a very long series of job applications. 

Joshu-Aid

This morning as a study break I went to move Josh into DC with his new roommate Steph W. Jeff, Goo, and Emmanuel also went to help. I followed instructions, for once, and did not lift things (like the couch) with my back, and so I end the day entirely uninjured. While unloading boxes and things from the moving van, we decided that we were really doing charity work for Josh and so we needed some stereotypical charity work photos.

Look how happy we are that she is handing me a box from the van!

We've got to handle certain items with care.

The photos got a little ridiculous at a certain point.

But it was all worth it to make Josh happy.

Once everything was in the apartment, Josh bought us all pizza because he is a swell guy. I am very glad that he is finally within a reasonable number of metro stops.

Kelsey had work today, and apparently deals with the same student problems that I do. Like, for example, how many of them end up mistakenly plagiarizing because somewhere down the line someone told them that it wasn't plagiarism if you don't lift a direct quotation. When she finished work, she came over and we went on a 5.4 mile run (she is training for a half marathon. I am not, but I try to be supportive). As always, DC is a wonderful place to run because the landmarks are all very round-number distances from my house.

And also from each other. This is a mile away...

And we know that because we were here.

The Smithsonian has put up Christmas lights all around the Mall, which made things that much better. We returned and had chicken korma. Then I made flash cards for evidence, because it is imperative that I know all the reasons why we restrict huge swaths of evidence from trial and also how to sneak every piece of that evidence back in under the guise of acceptable evidence. 

And do you know what word that is?

I am now finished with two of my three academic classes. I have my last street law class to teach tomorrow, and then my final evidence class, and then.... nothing. No more classes. Just exams. Three of them. And one negotiation case, and one negotiation paper, and one portfolio for street law, and one Note for journal, and one chapter opener for the government book for street law, inc. And a partridge in a pear tree. 

Today was rough because we had a double-class in ethics in order to make up for a missed class earlier in the semester. I'm all about ethics, but four hours talking about the model code of conduct gets to be a bit much. Also, our professor, who I like very much, sometimes thinks that we are mind readers.

From this morning:

Prof: Now, rule 6.1 deals with pro bono service. What is the one word that sums up the nature of this rule?

Student 1: Voluntary?

Prof: No, that’s written into it…

Student 2: Suggested?

Prof: Well, yes but that’s not what I’m looking for...

Student 3: Urged?

Prof: No

Student 4: Discretionary?

Prof: No

Student 5: Permissive?

Prof: No

Student 6: Optional?

Prof: No. Anyone else? Come on. One word.... Okay. The word I wanted you to come up with was “precatory.” 

Well of COURSE it was precatory. That's the very next word I was going to say, because "precatory" sure was a word I knew before he said it. Yes, sir. It sure was.

Tiny Houses

I've been moderately obsessed with tiny houses for a while now. They exist as the beautifully designed answer to a question that no one really asked: how small of a space can still be called a fully functional home? 

Goo found a newspaper article about a tiny house build-site in Washington DC, so naturally Noah did some computer hacking to find out where it was and Goo, Kelsey, and I drove over to say hi. We expected a large group of people to be gathered, but it turns out we are the only ones creepy and stalker-ish enough to actually do this. Well, credit where credit is due: it was Goo's idea.

We walked up to the fence and a woman who was working on the tiny houses came up to us. This is how I remember the conversation going, in retrospect:

Goo: "We wanted to see your tiny houses."

Woman: "Oh, well we're going to be having an open house later and there are liability issues--" 

Goo: "--did I mention I was Emily Goo?"

Woman: "Oh, why didn't you say so, come on in, NEW BEST FRIEND EVER."

It was something like that. Goo also brought cookies, which seemed to help. Anyway, they let us in and were super cool about letting us tour around their construction zone.

First stop: tiny garden!

Goo shows what will one day be an entire house.

Two of the houses next to one another.

I'm standing in what will eventually be a shower.

And this will be the sleeping area.

Immediately after leaving, Goo had a friend request from the woman and an invitation to some sort of event.

This morning I had the opportunity to go to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to hear some arguments and chat with the Chief Justice, who is a professor at Georgetown. It was a really cool experience, and I think I'll be taking his seminar next fall because I hear it is awesome.

Tonight I ended up going to a panel that Steph R. organized on human trafficking. I thought that I was pretty well informed about that kind of stuff but was still shocked by some of the information presented. Basically, the entire plot for the movie Taken is true and happening in the US on a daily basis. That's a good summary. 

Exams start after this week, which means the most wonderfully busy time of the year has begun! One portfolio, one case study, one note, one paper, and three exams left to go.

The Story Wherein Kelsey Does Not Ruin Thanksgiving

Wednesday was the first day of Thanksgiving break. The plan was to go to Kels's house to help her pack some things and then go back to my place to be picked up by Mom and Rachel. Since I am writing this in my blog and since you have no doubt grown accustomed to my story set-ups, you already know that the plan did not quite work as expected. In fact, so many things went wrong that it almost seemed right.

First, Kels locked her car keys and house keys in her house. Also in her house were my keys to my house that I had forgotten. Everything was alright, though, because her landlord was just fifteen minutes away and said he would be able to come back because his work had not started yet. Kelsey went to go sit behind her house and wait. Because she was raised in Virginia and is polite, she texted him to advise him of her location:

"Waiting in back of house. Head hung in shame."

He texted back "No problem."

Twenty minutes later, Kelsey slowly came to the realization that her landlord had thought that she was telling him that she had gotten back in the house and that he had likely turned around and gone back to work. A phone call confirmed this, and her landlord informed her that he could not get off work until 3PM. Kelsey then burst into tears and started repeating the mantra "I killed Thanksgiving" over and over again. She had not, but she kept saying this.

Then- hope! I knew that everyone who had a key to my house (where I had a spare key to Kels's house which I had also forgotten to bring) was gone for break, but I did not know that Noah and given Davia his key to hold while he was gone. This provided a window of opportunity and a plan was hatched.

I took Mom's car with Rach while Mom and Kels stayed at Kels's place and drove to the law center, where Davia was working. Davia came out to give me the key and while looking for a place to pull over I scraped the car against the bumper of a mail truck. Davia helpfully asked me, in all sincerity, why I had hit the truck. I think I said something along the lines of "because that's how this day has decided to go and I'm not going to fight it anymore" but I am not sure she heard me. The truck driver came out and said there was no damage to her bumper at all so I could just go.

So I went back to my place and was shocked when I was able to get in without destroying something or ripping off the door-handle. Got my keys, went back to Kels's place, got her keys out and my keys back, and went on our way.

It was great to be back in Maryland for Thanksgiving. Rachel and I ran four miles on Thanksgiving morning so that we could eat more during the day. Well, that's why I did it, at least.

Friday morning we headed back to DC early because we had tickets to see Jekyll and Hyde at the Kennedy Center starring one of the guys who didn't win American Idol. To be fair to Constantine, he was actually the best part of the show. The show itself left me wondering how any producer ever thought that it would be any good. The plot seems written by a fifth grader:

A doctor wants to get his insane father out of the insane asylum and develops (don't ask how) a serum (don't ask what it's made of) to separate (don't ask how) the evil (don't ask what this means) and the good (this either) from man (don't ask where the evil goes once it is separated). Skipping all animal trials or even illicit volunteer trials, the doctor violates every rule of scientific method that has ever existed and injects himself with what appears to be 50 gallons of phosphorescent liquids that also happen to be conducting electricity (don't ask where THAT comes from). This turns the doctor into a terrible monster who takes a different name and takes his hair out from a ponytail in order to become ENTIRELY UNRECOGNIZABLE to people who have known him for his whole life. The doctor, when he is back to being himself, tells no one what is happening and tries to fix it himself by ordering drugs (don't ask why he knows these drugs will work) from the least efficient apothecary on the planet. Then he turns back into the monster and kills everyone BECAUSE SCIENCE. 

Someone looked at this plot and said "sounds great! But when we make it into a musical, let's be sure that there is only one real full company song so that we can fill the rest of the show with solo pieces because audiences love an entire show filled with nothing but one person singing to and with himself. Right? Right?"

I'm being harsh. It was a fun show, it just didn't make any sense.

On Saturday Kels and I went to see Skyfall, or as I like to call it: Home Alone V: Skyfall, because a large portion of the movie was basically a more violent and realistic interpretation of the home invasion sequence from any Home Alone movie. I enjoyed it.

Today I was able to see Brian and Kay as they passed through on their way up to Philly, and then it was off to work in the library. After the library we celebrated Jeff's birthday with some wine, cheese, chili, and cornbread. We almost celebrated with a tart, but it was moldy so we just sang a sad happy birthday song while Jeff held a moldy tart. We also decorated the Christmas tree, because it is Christmas season now and our house will smell like a pine forest for the next month because that's how Christmas is done.

Negotiations (Part 2)

This past weekend I did the second half of my two-weekend Negotiations Seminar. Though three 9-5 days (plus homework) over the weekend was taxing and difficult, the course itself was so good that I would do it again in a heartbeat. My role in the final negotiation simulation of the weekend was that of saboteur to a six-party multi-billion dollar deal. I got to gleefully pretend like I was engaging in principled negotiation tactics while in reality subverting the entire process. Though I didn't succeed in sinking the entire negotiation, I did manage to make two of the parties extremely angry at one another for absolutely no reason. Even after I explained that my job had been to derail the negotiations and that I had purposefully misled both of them against one another, they were still angry at each other. Negotiating is a very serious game.

My final project for this class is going to be a case negotiation that I will need to workshop, so I may bother some of you in the next month or so if you would like to help out.

I lost some time last week to a brief stomach virus. While I am 100% healthy and feeling great now, I had to spend last Tuesday in bed all day. At first I thought it was food poisoning and so I threw out everything that I had eaten that day, but then Kelsey and Josh got the same thing. It was a worse bug than I've had in a while. At one point, around 3AM, I recall being crouched over my trashcan whimpering "I have nothing left to give" to my body, in the hopes that it might cease its noble work of removing the perceived threat from my system by any means necessary. So that was fun.

Everything else about the week went very well. My students were half-overjoyed and half-dejected that I had shaved my mutton chops. Their attachment to the facial hair was unexpected.

Last night, Kels went to go see Twilight with Stephanie R., so Ben and Micah and I had a man-date. We went to the Beergartenhaus on H street and had liters of beer and many plates of delicious sauerkraut. Afterwards, Ben demonstrated his growing ability of drink mixing and created some remarkable cocktails with very uncommon ingredients.

The Greatest Mystery

The musical is finished! I had a great time performing in The Mystery of Edwin Drood and working with my fellow GGSS actors once again. The greatest part about theater, though, is what a great excuse it provides for people to come visit! Also, parties. Also, growing out ridiculous facial hair. 

The mutton chops are now gone.

The Kelsey remains.

Both Absi and Kels wrote blogs about the show. Highlights for me included going to a party at Steph and Josh's new place (floor to ceiling windows!), seeing family, and reuniting with Brian and Absi. On top of that, I got to act every night with Josh, all my housemates, and Goo.

This week I am going to an event about Shakespeare and law that is being moderated by my Advanced Criminal Procedure professor. Beyond that, I am going to try to rest and get a lot of work done. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, pictures from the show! (by Jonathan Zucker)

Kiera taught me to dance for Curtains, so I felt it was appropriate that my character in this show returned the favor.

The full cast.

This is the exact face Noah and I make when we see each other in the mornings. 

Because we're morning people.

Hurricane Watch

On Saturday morning, we were zombies.

Really.

We waited by the road for runners. Because we hate runners. Who doesn't? 

Kels had trouble with the "zombies don't smile" concept.

Some people would rather ford a river than face us.

Which makes sense, given our faces.

Saturday night, we were X-men. The party was at my place, so we didn't want to scare people away. I dressed as my students (having seen the evolution of my facial hair) requested. 

Not that I will ever actually tell them I dressed up as Wolverine.

The party was a great success, with friends from all around coming by. I should have taken more pictures of the house, because Jeff did a great job decorating.

On Sunday, it started raining. Then DCPS cancelled class. Then GULC cancelled class. Then I caught up on a little work and a lot of sleep while in a house with the best of company and plentiful supplies of food. All in all, the most pleasant hurricane I have been through. 

And today, today I am in my journal office trying to finish up five pages of a note before rehearsal. I am in very good spirits, though, because I got to teach a class earlier. My students have been working on projects for the last couple of weeks, and today was the first day I was able to take a look at some of them. There are some uninspired dud projects, to be sure, but a few students came up with creative projects that are just flat out amazing. I can't wait to get a copy of some of these things (posterboards, songs, poems, cartoons) so that I can share them.

Runventure

This was my Saturday:

The original plan was just to run to a museum (mile 2) and then to Kels's gym (mile 3) so that she could go to BodyDestruction or whatever the name of that awful class is where the pregnant ladies lift more than me and I am told over and over again that there's "just one more" set or curl or crunch or press or pushup but it is all a terrible lie... which is all to say that we got there and the guy at the front desk gave me a free pass so that I could experience aforementioned fun.

When we got out of the gym we sort of wanted falafel, and there is only one falafel place in the city that is worth going to, so we just ran there (mile 7). Then we walked back to where we started. It was a long walk.

This is a tree that Kels saw.

She liked the tree.

So she gave it a hug.

On Sunday we went over to Eastern Market to look at all of the stuff. Eastern Market is a place that has a lot of stuff. And food.

I took a picture of food using some mirrors for sale at the market. They were very large.

And that was the weekend! (Except for the part where I worked on journal for far too long. I left that part out because I take pity on both my current readers and on my future self reading this blog.)

"Rising up to the challenge of our rivals..."

I would like to say that I trained well for my race on Saturday. I would like to say that I ran at all during the two weeks leading up to the race. I sure would like to say that. 

But in spite of my foolishness in training, I survived and it was a great day to race. It would have been foolish of me not to run as fast as I could, given that it was 33 degrees and I was wearing shorts. 

We were thrilled to wake up at 5AM to get to the race. See?

We had some trouble finding the race start line (and the town the race happened to be in- who would have thought that West Virginia would nullify all of our GPS devices?) but got there and got our race numbers with half an hour to spare.

Kelsey used this time to get a coffee. Alex was making silly gestures of some sort.

The night before the race, I made a playlist, removed all the titles from the songs, and e-mailed it to Kelly, Alex, and Kels to load onto their ipods. At exactly 3 minutes before the race started, everyone pressed play. In this way, we would all be listening to the same music together no matter where we were on the course. The playlist was filled with epic songs that had to do something with either running or fitness. You know: Eye of the Tiger, Chariots of Fire, Born to Run... that kind of stuff. I even threw on Neverending Story near the end, just in case someone had to take more than an hour to finish the 10k. 

The course itself started in West Virginia and then went over a bridge into Maryland, up and down the C&O Canal. I was feeling really good about things until I started seeing markers in places. At the top of the marker it would say "10k" and underneath that it would say "3" or "4." Since I was running and cold, I did not really have time to process this other than figuring that the "3" meant 3 kilometers. This was extremely disheartening, as I passed marker "4" at 30 minutes and I had really wanted to run the 10k in under an hour. Later, I would find that these numbers were actually mile indicators and I was much closer than I thought.

The final challenge of the course was running back up a hill and across the bridge in order to get to the stadium in the center of the town. The hill was not pleasant and I slowed down considerably. Still, I pushed on and managed to not walk the entire race. As I ran into the stadium they announced my name (I was in a pack of one) and I crossed the finish line almost 48 minutes after I started.

Personal record! (of course, no matter what my time was I was going to get a personal record, since this was my first race.)

Alex beat me by about a minute, and Kelly and Kels showed up a few minutes later. Then the race organizers gave us free pizza and beer, because what we really wanted at 10AM after running 6.2 miles was a beer.

Kelsey got a Bud Light. She says it was because she prefers Bud Light. The rest of us feel it is because there was no one getting Bud Light and the Bud Light man looked sad.

The post-race party was at a very swanky Bavarian-themed hotel.

Upon getting back to DC, we were hungry again so we went to get more pizza.

We chose to make our own at H and Pizza. It was a solid choice.

Layer Upon Layer Upon Layer Upon Goat

Once upon a time I directed a play and my actors made a pretty good joke about how all of my directions essentially added layers of characterization upon other, conflicting layers of characterization.

Example (that Josh might give):
"I want to see love but also hate, and there's some malaise there about your place in the universe and you also think this might be a dream. But underneath that you've got a mischievous nature and you are also worried about the safety of your pet rat."

Anyway, I would expand on this metaphor if I had time (which I do not), but I am starting to feel like this semester is just layer upon layer upon layer upon goat. What is the goat resting on? Perhaps another goat. It's goats all the way down.

That said, the negotiation seminar is the best class I have taken since high school. Even if it did ruin my entire schedule.

In other news, an application (that will go unexplained for superstitious reasons) I have been working on for a long while (since August) is finally complete and submitted. This one is something that I actually want and, regardless of whether or not this particular application process works out, I have made some excellent contacts and have everything together to keep on submitting the application until they take me.

Thanks, Cold Readings

If my time acting and doing cold readings of scripts has given me anything, it has given me the ability to read things very quickly and then say them as though I was not just reading something. I was on call today in Evidence, which means that I was responsible for one out of four cases that we were going over. So I read two cases very well (okay, well I read ONE very well) and skimmed over the rest, because that seemed like the efficient thing to do. When it came time for one of the people on call to volunteer, I was the first to raise my hand and gave the synopsis of my case. I got it over with, I relaxed, I went on with my class.

Then it was time for the second case. The judges who teach the class asked for another volunteer from those on call. No one raised a hand. Then they pulled out the list. They always have a list of people that they have told to be prepared, and they just run through that list when someone doesn't volunteer. They called the first name on the list:

"Is ____ here?"

Silence

"Is _____ here?"

Silence

"Alright... is ______ here?"

Silence. They look back at me. "Would anyone like to save Mr. Johnson?" Classroom of a hundred people. No one raises a hand. (To be fair, the judges were running a class behind so everyone "safely" assumed that they would not get to this reading.)

I am auto-assigned every other case instantly. I spit out what I know of the second case and then try to read the small details of the third case while they talk. It was fun. I only said something that was directly contradicted by the case once, but I recovered quickly. By the time we got to the fourth case a very kind classmate had read ahead and took the bullet for me. Well, at least the judges know my name now.

Running = Free Stuff

Once again Kels and I took to the streets of DC over the weekend for a run and came back with some furniture. For those keeping score, this is now four weekends in a row. This time we found a lovely kitchen countertop-thing on wheels that can serve as an island in Kels's apartment. Even if there were not intrinsic rewards in running, I think it might be worth keeping up just for the extrinsic rewards.

Then again, there is also a 10k that I have to run in under 2 weeks. Uh-oh.

It is now the first week in October, which means that first assignments for everything are now coming due- Street Law monthly report, Journal mass proof, reading for negotiations seminar, model teaching assignment, etc.... so once again, the buzz saw is spinning up. Hooray!

Modern Major General

Just a normal week in terms of classwork. Still like my professors a lot. Example: "so how does this procedure work? Well, when I was defending John Edwards last year, here's what we did...." In Evidence, we are currently discussing hearsay. As a general rule, it seems that everything is hearsay and yet 99% of that hearsay can be admitted due to an exception or reframing of the issue... so that's useful.

In odder news, I had an interview for a summer internship that began with the question: "are you the very model of a modern major general?" I had no choice but to patter through the first stanza. I think it went well.

That's all for right now. Have to go write a test!

FoodTrucktoberFest

As of 10:49AM today, it was Fall. Many things have happened during the transition from Summer to Fall, and one of those things was that Kelsey became a DC expert. She fears no DC driver, follows the blogs of all the neighborhoods, and tweets to every single foodtruck. For all intents and purposes, she belongs in DC much more than I do.

And this is how she knew about FoodTrucktoberFest, a first-day-of-Fall gathering of over 40 food trucks into one location. Alex M and I met Kelsey and her sister Kim there around 3 today, and we were not disappointed. (All photos credited to Alex, for I took none.)

It was very well attended.

We started off at the BBQ Bus, where the secret is in the sauces. If I can't have NC BBQ, then this is a very acceptable substitute. 

Then we got a handmade chicken chorizo sausage with bacon and pineapple. 

Well, that should be pretty self-explanatory. 

For dessert, where else could we go but Captain Cookie and the Milkman? This is my friend Kirk's foodtruck, and, fittingly, he had the longest line out of them all. Ginger-molasses with black cherry ice cream and peanut-butter with chocolate ice cream. You can't really top that.

For an after-meal drink, how about an apple cider float? 

They should do food truck festivals more often. But not that often. Alex and I walked over 2 miles back to our respective places and somehow did not feel any less full at the end of the walk. 

Well, back to lesson planning, or reading for class, or reading for work, or job applications, or journal, or something along those lines. Or maybe I'll just do none of that.

No Escape

So as it turns out I am in another show this semester. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I had been unsure about whether I should do it, given my workload, but I went in to audition. Then I promptly withdrew myself from the audition process. Then it just so happened that the only role I would have accepted was left conveniently vacant. Then I accepted the role on the condition that I only had to come in one night a week (or two nights, if right after Tuesday/Thursday Evidence classes). I get to come on, be in one scene, sing one song, and be basically done with it (unless the audience votes me to sing more, since this is like a choose-your-own-ending musical). I will post the show dates once I know them. The show stars our dear Emily Goo as the titular Edwin Drood, Noah as Drood's evil-ish uncle, and Jeff as the master of ceremonies (who once again gets to stay on stage the entire time- HA!) This also represents the first time since 2006 that Josh and I have shared the stage together. Who would have thought that would happen?

In other news, I gave my students their first test. They are very bright but really need to work on their critical thinking skills. I suppose that's what my entire class is supposed to be about.


 In other other news, some of you were distraught that I was sitting on a filing cabinet in front of my desk. Well, while I was out running with Kelsey and Alex and Kelly the other day I literally ran into a chair that was on the sidewalk (people in DC often put furniture outside for people to just take- it's a normal thing) so I just grabbed it and kept on running.

So now I have an office chair. I cleaned it and tightened up its bolts so it works as good as new. I'm even sitting on it right now! 

The next day I went running, I came across a box full of classical music CDs. I took some of them. Running in DC in the fall is sort of like a free prize giveaway. 

In other other other news, I installed a new nightlight. It has been met with near universal derision, but I really like it.

It's all part of my technology beta-testing in preparation for Defcon Fun.