Boston, Thanksgiving, JoshuAID II

Well, it has been an eventful couple of weeks.

This post must begin with a debrief of the Boston trip that was much touted by Emily Goo- I mean me, of course- in my last post. I personally enjoy flying, so I had a blast on the plane with Ben and Kelsey on the way up. Kelsey was not such a huge fan of the flying, but she was a trooper and only insinuated that she was probably going to die three or four times during our hour-long flight. 

We had a layover in Newark and I had some passes to Club United that I gave to Kelsey and Ben while I worked on a paper in the airport Starbucks. While working on my paper I inadvertently played with Natalie Portman's child while completely failing to realize that Natalie Portman was sitting next to me at Starbucks. I slowly put the pieces together after she left with her family but by that time it was too late. Kelsey was upset that I did not alert her to come stargazing. I was impressed with Ms. Portman's ability to go incognito as someone who looks vaguely like Natalie Portman but oh-wait-she's-wearing-mom-jeans-so-she-couldn't-be. 

When we arrived in Boston Kelsey immediately fell in love with our taxi driver's accent and forgot all about the joys of small commuter propeller-planes. Goo's apartment building was beautiful and had an amazing view of the Boston skyline, and once we got there (at 2AM) she provided us with hot spiced cider and cannoli. 

In the morning Kels and I went into Boston to meet up with Brandon, Luke, and Mary for lunch near Harvard. I hadn't seen any of them in a long time, but they were my rocks of competence and authority during the run of Tragedy! in NYC. We reminisced, Kelsey interrupted me far too many times while I was trying to tell the story of how we met (replacing it with revisionist history), and we experienced the best malted chocolate shake that I have ever consumed (I write consumed because I am not sure whether one eats or drinks a milkshake, nor do I care enough to find out). A delightful time was had by all.

Afterwards, we went to Kendall Square to visit with Auntie Deb and Uncle Bob. We drank tea, talked about networking, and compared dark chocolate. How very Bostonian of us?

Then it was off to Goo's to get dressed for The Hunger Games. Goo is sort of into The Hunger Games, in the way that circles are sort of into being round, and so she got costumes for all of us to wear. Since I was Caesar Flickerman when we did a Goo-written stage play of The Hunger Games last year (or two years ago, I forget), I obviously got to play that role again. Kelsey went all out as Effie Trinket, Josh was Haymitch, and Ben was Peeta. Jeff and Sara were nice enough to just go to the Hunger Games when it was Jeff's birthday and their anniversary, so they were not required to wear costumes (though Sara did have a wig). Goo was a perfect Katniss, as always. People were taking pictures with her in the theater.

Watching The Mikado with Emily's mom as Katisha

The next day we went to Emily's childhood hometown and snooped around her childhood home and ate Chinese food from her childhood Chinese food place. Now we are officially her real friends. After that we went to see her mother as Katisha in The Mikado! Ms. Gouillart's interpretation of the role was much more vulnerable and empathetic than Emily's dragon-lady performance from last year, but one could still very clearly see that the two actresses were closely related. After the performance Goo rushed us to the airport and we made our flight without any problem. 

Something like three days later, it was time for Thanksgiving break. Kelsey and I hopped in the car and drove down to Warrenton, Virginia to have thanksgiving with her family. I got to hang out with her sister's boyfriend and new baby, and had a very relaxing time. 

I also got to hang out with Kelsey's step-sister's daughters. I tried to teach her about rocketry and crypto-currencies but she just wanted to play board games. Kids these days.

On the way back from Thanksgiving we met up with my mom and sister for lunch!

The next day, Saturday, was JoshuAid 2. You may recall that Josh moved last year....

Remember?

Well, Josh is a jerk so he moved again. 

Thanks, Josh.

He also moved to the third floor of a building with no elevator, so we had to bucket-brigade much of the stuff.

An excellent concept, but probably just as tiring as taking things up one at a time.

Josh is now moved in, and I have one week until exams. I had my last day interning at the superior court today, and I went to sit in on a pro se (defendant defends himself) murder trial. Things did not seem to be going well for the defendant, especially after he asked the arresting officer to point out footage of the defendant throwing a punch and the officer simply pointed at a screen, hit play, and said "there" as the defendant threw a punch in full view of a security camera. Rule #1 of cross-examination: never ask a question if you aren't 100% sure of the answer.

Normal Post Reflecting on Cabaret. Certainly Not a Guest Post from Emily Goo.

[but if it were a guest post from Emily Goo, I would say as always that, to my most assuredly great future remorse, I have not edited it in the least]

 Hi again everyone. It's me again, your friend Mike Johnson. I am definitely taking the time to sit down and write this blog post again. In no way have I outsourced this responsibility to my dear friend and past guest blogger Emily Goo, who, while we're on the subject, is literally the coolest person who has ever existed in the whole of human history. Don't you agree? Of course you do. It is proven. It is meant.

 So, since I, Mike, am writing this post, and definitely not Emily Goo, paragon of greatness, I will totally write a few more details about this past show week with perfect knowledge and recall, because after all, it was I, Mike, who lived through those things, so of course I would know exactly what I got up to all week. It was like this, you see:

 SUNDAY:
On Sunday, I probably slept in kind of late, unless Kelsey woke me up and encouraged me to go for a run, which I did so that I could smile at all the jealous-looking guys passing by who were staring at Kelsey and then stop for just a moment to whisper "That's right. She's with me." In the evening, I can only assume that I went to a cue-to-cue or tech rehearsal of some kind for Cabaret. It is very safe to assume that I effectively sang about pineapples, and made two endearingly awkward dance errors, for such is my aw-shucks charm that keeps my friends' mothers all across this nation asking their children, "How is your friend Mike? He is just such a lovely guy. Send him my best."

MONDAY:
I probably went to class, because I am responsible, but with a slight glaze in my eyes because show week sleep deprivation was already creeping in. I definitely wielded a few overenthusiastic GChats from Emily Goo, who, in case I failed to mention before, is the absolute cat's pajamas and whose formidable intellect is rivaled only by her razor-sharp wit. Maybe I dozed off a little bit in class, but when the professor called on me, I of course knew exactly what to say because I'm Mike Johnson. I always can at least sound like I know what I'm doing, gentle reader. Never forget this. In the evening, I went to our first dress rehearsal and probably did the costume parade, at which I debuted my comical hairpiece, mustache, and old-German-dude suit replete with sweater vest and garish bow tie. Through the wizardry of costume designer...

(please hold while I definitely don't have to check the program, because I'm Mike Johnson after all, I'm in the show, so why would I need to confirm the costume designer?)

 ...Liz Ennis, the affable WASPy Mike you've come to know and love so well was transformed into an elderly Jew from the past. It is a safe bet that at some point, Justine McClain, my stage fiancée, spanked me without warning and shockingly hard. This likely occurred right after our tender love ballad about tropical fruit. Justine McClain suffers from a rare affliction known as Compulsive SlapAss. An educational video about this condition can be found here.

TUESDAY:
I definitely did some more stuff on Tuesday! Class probably? Maybe worked at the library? Fed Rupert, the cat, who once joined forces with our house's upstairs cat to torment Emily Goo while she was stuck alone in my house in an incident she still has not recovered from (freaking cat)? Then in the evening was the final dress rehearsal! I am sure I exchanged some snarky, manly words with my friend Dan Snow. I am sure I gave a big hug to my beloved friend Abigail "Absi" Fine, who is finally in DC and who I'm privileged to share a stage with again. (I'm pretty sure, being Mike Johnson and having lived my own life, that Absi and I have been onstage before. My friend Emily Goo might not be 100% sure of that. But that's irrelevant, because Emily Goo is definitely not writing this post.) I am sure my adrenaline was very high as I watched the show come together to perfection. I am sure I felt slightly uncomfortable when I went to kiss Kelsey backstage, because I was dressed as a grinning lonely old man and she was dressed as a young sultry temptress and the effect was beyond lecherous. But whatever, you try turning down the chance to make out with Kelsey. Fortunately, I am Mike Johnson, so I don't ever have to do that!

 Wednesday:

OPENING NIGHT! There was a day that happened before opening night, so I probably did some law stuff -- you know, tort reform, some kind of litigation, mock trials and such things? Whatever. It was OPENING NIGHT.

While I was disappointed that my friend Emily Goo was not able to come for opening night, it is the consensus of pretty much everyone that the performance was a stunning success. I definitely want to give you a lot of details about the performance, because after all, I'm Mike Johnson and I was there! I am qualified to do that! So wait right here, I'll be right back to get you those firsthand details of opening night. Wait a minute, what's this in my pocket? Oh look! It's Dr. Who's Sonic Screwdriver! BOOM! Oh, hey, you're back. What were we talking about, you ask? I had just finished giving you alll the details about Wednesday night's performance! Then we went to The Goat for the opening night party, because we always do that! I am sure someone sang some karaoke and at least one person got ridiculously drunk! Some people had french fries. The mood was high and nobody wanted to go to bed and have this triumphant night end.

Thursday:
SECOND NIGHT OF CABARET! Nearly as importantly, Emily Goo arrived in DC that afternoon. My mother and maternal grandmother were coming to the show and invited me to join them for a quick drink before call. Obviously, when I arrived, I found my mother, maternal grandmother, sitting at a table sipping cocktails and laughing with...Emily Goo. Obviously. Because parents love Emily Goo and Emily Goo loves parents. Especially my mom. And...well...I think she's got all my grandparents wrapped up too. I gave Goo a hug, posed for a silly picture with her, and off I went to call.

Token picture of me & Goo. 

It is safe to assume that my cherished friend and unofficial housemate Sara Collins assisted me in putting on my old man makeup, and anytime I asked a clarifying question, she told me that "I was the worst" and pushed my face.

I did an absolutely wonderful job on Thursday night. I know this because Emily Goo screeched with delight like some kind of rabid forest creature anytime I said or did anything impressive or funny. I was particularly effective during Justine's and my infamous pineapple song, at which point Emily Goo could be heard from the audience yelping "Is that a PINEAPPLE? WHY IS THERE A PINEAPPLE?" I played it cool and did not break character, not even when Emily Goo loudly yelled an expletive during the dramatic reveal of Josh's character's swastika insignia. I am an excellent actor.

Seriously, though, my performance was poignant, soulful, funny, and virtually flawless. I was the most endearing old Jewish man you've ever imagined and sometimes I made audience members tear up. Definitely not Emily Goo. She was probably just cutting onions. Emily Goo does not cry; she is too mighty.

After the show and receiving my enthusiastic tackle from Emily Goo, we adjourned to Josh's house for an epic post-show party. Highlights include:
- Xander screwing up the Christmas light display and leaving it in a sorry heap on the floor. HE HAD ONE JOB.
- Josh demonstrating his uncomfortably sensual lip dub to "Maybe This Time."
- Watching Emily Goo's face fall when she learned that her Internet best friend and, if you ask some gullible people (HI, AMY RENO!), her cousin Michael van Maele was perfect in every way except for being a vegan. Don't worry, the relationship was saved.

FRIDAY:
I joined Emily Goo, Sara, Jeff, Justine, Davia and Noah for lunch at Wiseguy Pizza where I fraped her with too much sriracha sauce on her pizza and watched as the contents of her already impaired sinuses (she was getting over some kind of walking pneumonia death thing) emptied out onto the sidewalk of Washington DC. Then I went back to work because I am boring even though the rest of them all hung out for several more hours and missed me terribly.

Friday night was far and away our best performance of Cabaret. The energy was high, everyone seemed totally lost in their characters, all the fancy effects went off without a hitch, and the music -- both orchestra- and vocalist-wise -- was impeccable. Emily Goo could be seen in the second row convulsing with joy. This may just be because she had a great view up the Kit Kat Girls' skirts, though. Very difficult to tell.

After that performance, we went to a wonderful and always-uberclassy party at Dania and Bogo's house. This was officially the formal party, but frankly, any party at Dania and Bogo's house is a formal party, because the two of them are JUST THAT CLASSY. The party featured gobs of delicious food and drink, beautifully dressed people everywhere you turned, whimsical and improbable social situations, and Ben's friend Mike Ottaviano, who Emily Goo was strangely confrontational to. I'm sure there's an explanation. She doesn't want to talk about it. It was a great time.

SATURDAY:

My paternal grandparents came to town! We had lunch at the Argonaut, I think? Yeah, the Argonaut. It was great to see them.

Saturday's performance went fantastically. I am sure I experienced many emotions as I sang each song and performed each scene for the last time. I am sure I contemplated how much I would miss drunkenly rambling about schnapps to my dear friend Josh Litten. I am sure I thought about how I never expected to feel so emotionally attached to a pineapple.

The cast party was in Gewirz 12, as ever, also known as Emily Goo's former unofficial residence on the GULC campus. (As to the allegations that she has slept in G12 more than five times, I challenge you to prove anything.) I got my tech prize for serving on the following crew. Please talk amongst yourselves while I stretch my arms out. I'm definitely not reaching for the program again to see what crew I am on.

Set! Obviously. I am great at sets. And I did a great job with the Cabaret one, by the way, under the supervision of my crew head, roommate, landlord, and close friend Jeff Asjes. I think Jeff probably gave me a piece of the set that said something in cursive? I totally remember, because I'm me and I experienced it.

SUNDAY:
The next day was strike, during which I probably pulled apart and destroyed lots of things I worked very hard to create without complaining, and then probably dinner at Five Guys because tradition, and with that, one of GG&SS' best shows in the past 3 years -- if not the best -- was over. Emily Goo was gone by then, but left a legacy of greatness and gratitude for her devotion in attending 3 out of the 4 performances and matching, if not exceeding, her genuine enthusiasm on each subsequent night.

This week and weekend, I'll probably sleep as much as possible, except for a "low-key gathering" of about 50 people that's being arranged for this Friday involving peppermint schnapps and chocolate. 

Next weekend, Kelsey, Josh, Sara, Jeff, Ben and I all fly to Boston to visit Emily Goo's swanky new place for the first time, see her mother in The Mikado, tour her childhood home, and of course, go to the premiere of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in full costume. Because THAT is how respectable adults behave.

So in short: Cabaret was awesome, I am definitely Mike Johnson and not Emily Goo, and I discourage follow-up questions on the identity of this post's author. YAY CABARET!

CABARET

When Kelsey and I started dating, she insisted that, while she appreciated my love of theater, she:

1. was not a theater person
2. was not going to become a theater person, and
3. would never be in a show.

This is Kelsey from last week:

And here

 And here

I believe she even suggested getting hoisted into the air.

I am very proud of her for having jumped in, completely voluntarily, to the world of theater. It is a scary place, especially for someone who has never done anything remotely similar, but she was so comfortable that no one would have ever known this was her debut performance. 

The show itself was one of the best that I have been a part of, from an acting standpoint. The entire cast was great and contained a good mixture of both old and new friends. I also enjoyed that my character got to shake hands and give fruit to everyone. 

Justine was a delightful counterpart to my old man, and Xander and Elizabeth were two of the most talented 1Ls we could have wished for.

Italian oranges. Delicious.

Pineapple. Delicious.

Shaking hands with Josh, my dear friend for eight years now while Absi, another dear friend for eight years, chats in the background.

Shaking hands is almost as fun as giving out fruit.

It was wonderful, as always, to have family and friends come see the show. My family, Kelsey's family, my co-workers, Kelsey's co-workers, our friends from college, our friends from DC, etc.... all made sure that we had someone to specifically perform for each night. 

After strike, the entire cast started making plans to hang out with each other, because apparently eight weeks of rehearsal wasn't enough. Sometimes theater is like that.

Mock Trial Weekend in Detroit

After enduring two months of learning how to mock trial, I was sent by plane to Detroit to actively participate in a mock trial competition. Our case was a thinly veiled Oscar Pistorius story using How I Met Your Mother names. I, of course, got to play the defendant in addition to my responsibilities as prosecution closer and expert-witness examiner.

Team D (from left to right): Jessica, Nik (our wonderful coach), Caitlin, Travis, and Me.

We arrived in Detroit last Wednesday and were immediately struck by how not-bankrupt the airport and the immediately surrounding area looked. Then we realized that the airport was about a half hour from real Detroit, where we would be headed.

This is more like it.

When we got to the downtown area, all of the buildings were beautiful but something seemed... off. We slowly realized that there were just no people around. None. We were in the middle of what looked like a large downtown metropolitan area, and there we were the only people. We sauntered across a six-lane highway while the red hand was on. It was like a zombie movie. A very dull zombie movie. We were hungry so we went into a large sports bar. It was not late, but we were the only people there. When we walked in there was some loud rap music, but when the bartender saw us he changed it to quiet Bon Jovi. I'm not sure what to make of that. 

A view of our bar in the daytime. Note that we are right in the middle of downtown and you can see one whole person in this picture. 

A view of the "People Mover" (two-car monorail) tracks and the GM Renaissance Center.

Apparently Detroit refers to itself as "The D." I don't believe that has caught on outside the immediate area.

Closer view of the GM center, which was pretty great. 

View from the top of the GM Center. You can see Canada over the river.

Anyway, my team was great and we had a lot of fun. We won two rounds and lost one, which was probably my fault for using the wrong inflection in a sentence about the nature of intent. That was almost good enough to break into the top 4, but we ended up in 5th place. For a team full of first-timers, it was a very good result. Hopefully I will have another opportunity to do a trial next semester.

Now it's time to do all-Cabaret all-the-time. We go up next week!

The Mystery of the Ossicles

First off, I suppose I should talk about the ENT appointment that I had last Monday. I just got the official results back this Monday, and, SURPRISE, we continue to have no idea why my right ear sucks so very slightly. My right ear and Stonehenge- mysteries we may never solve.

The diagnosis, though, is that since there is nothing to explain the hearing loss, I may have had something percussive happen near or in my ear at the exact wrong time that caused one of my tiny ossicles to move the tiniest bit. If I absolutely had to, then technically I could have a minor surgery that complies with all Navy regulations and that would let me join in 120 days. I say "technically" because it is clear that lawyers did not write the Navy's medical manual and the procedure that they say they allow is more like ten different procedures that all happen to have the same name. Well, I am appealing on the basis of "this is dumb" but am also requesting an advisory opinion as to whether I am correct in my interpretation of their regulations.

In the meantime, I have been going on some fun job interviews. I had one this morning, actually, with a judge in Maryland. We talked about law for about thirty seconds and then we spent the remainder of the hour discussing musical theater and Battlestar Galactica. Boy am I glad that I learned all that law to prepare for interviews for legal jobs. (But really, I'm very happy that I finished Battlestar Galactica in spite of a couple lackluster seasons because the judge was a HUGE fan and apparently requires all of his clerks to watch the full series as homework.)

I leave for Detroit tomorrow and will hopefully do a writeup of how the competition goes, but until then here's a picture of my costume design for Cabaret. I may or may not end up looking anything like this, but I really like the concept.

SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING

I was only 9 or 10 when the last government shutdown happened and was not aware of it at the time, so the current shutdown is fascinating to me in a morbid gallows-humor sort of way. It would be more entertaining if many of my friends didn't work for the federal government as "non-essential" personnel. The big problem with "non-essential" is that a lot of it works out to "newer" and hence "lower-paid" and hence "people-who-actually-relied-on-their-paychecks" personnel. Then again, there is a bill in place that will get them paid after this is all over, so I suppose they'll be fine.

What has been most interesting, from a structured negotiation point of view, is the framing that has been done surrounding the shutdown debate. It's all very Roshomon, and I would enjoy it a lot more if it wasn't actively wasting billions of dollars and stopping me from going to all of my favorite museums that I always intend to but never actually have time to go to.

Last Monday I went to Emelie and Nathan's wedding. I've been friends with Emelie now for over a decade, meaning it has been over ten years since she was Sandy and I was Eugene in Woodberry's production of Grease. The wedding was beautiful (perfect weather, great location, and I got to sit with some old friends) and it was so nice to see her and her entire family again. I used to entertain her youngest sister when she was five, and now that sister is in high school and is, in fact, basically the same age that Em and I were when we met. I advised the sister to be especially nice to the people she meets this year, because some of them will likely be at her wedding.

The show is progressing nicely- I don't think that I have been a part of such a uniformly talented cast in a long time. The singing (not from me, but from others) is going to be spectacular. Kelsey and the Kit-Kat girls have bonded and she is starting to be a real theater person (one thing that she told me she would never, ever be).

Mock trial is also going well, though I did make a mistake in the most recent draft of my closing argument. Our case is about a man who has to wear prosthetic legs and who may or may not have murdered his girlfriend because he may or may not have thought there was an intruder in the house, and in the middle of my closing I was rising to an emotional and rhetorical high-point when I yelled "It just isn't reasonable to have that sort of CRIPPLING fear."

This is why we do multiple drafts.

Nothing Like a Fall Show

It's September, and that means I once again backtracked on any and all previous declarations that I would not audition for the fall GGSS musical. We're doing Cabaret and I will be playing Schultz, the Jewish fruit-vendor who serves as a reminder to the audience that things in 1930's Germany were about to go in a slightly negative direction.

I am very proud to say that I am one of FIVE William and Mary people who are in this show. I was the only one two years ago in Curtains, and I'm going to go ahead and take the credit for getting at least three out of the other four who are currently participating. I am most proud of Kelsey, who has never expressed any interest in being in a show and who, a day before the audition, decided that she wanted to be a dancer. In true GGSS fashion, they said "OK, but will you sing for us too?" and she ended up getting one of the named Kit Kat Girl roles. Other WM people include Josh, who is playing Ernst (the cuddliest Nazi) and Absi, who just moved to DC and who I'm very excited to do a show with again (since we last did a show together in... 2007?). There is also a new 1L from William and Mary for whom I cannot take credit. Apparently people from William and Mary sometimes just choose to come to Georgetown Law and end up in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society.

The show goes up November 6th-9th, and I will go ahead and highly recommend this one. We did a first read/sing-through last night and some of the leads could sing the exact same way at the performances and still make people cry. I told a couple of them to lay off and leave some room for improvement.

Nothing much else is new. It has started to get cold again. I may have to stop wearing shorts sometime within the next couple of weeks. Always a sad transition. BUT, stores start selling everything with a pumpkin spice flavor, so there is that.

Phoenix

Every time I have wanted to blog in the past month, I have then thought "no, better work on a job application." I rarely actually DID work on a job application, but I was certainly thinking about it and I did get a few finished. Also, I still have a theoretical shot with JAG pending an appointment with an ENT (because my hearing loss isn't the permanent inner-ear kind and may be able to be fixed, though I wouldn't really notice a difference either way except in how it alters my employment status).

I have been touched over the past month by how many people in my life decided to make my post-school job their personal mission. You all are the best. For now, though, there will be no more job posts on the blog until I have a signed contract in my hand (and even then, maybe not until I've been working for a year or so. Don't want to chance it). Back to the boring synopses of my day-to-day life!

To kick off the school year we had a labor day cookout on Monday after plans for a normal weekend brunch morphed into a... labor day cookout. We had a lot of extra meat from Costco due to a miscommunication about meat-buying for another cookout earlier in the summer, so I volunteered to make burgers. I actually followed a recipe instead of just dumping a bottle of Worcestershire into a mixing-bowl of ground beef, which is what I normally do, and the burgers came out great. Justine and Patrick also brought a package of bacon and asked if I wanted to grill it. I had not done bacon on a grill before, but the idea of bacon to put on top of the burgers was appealing so I said sure. I asked Kelsey to lay out the bacon on the grill, shut the lid, and went inside for a second to bring in burgers.

When I came back, I noticed that the grill thermometer had gone from 200 degrees (F) to about 700 degrees. A curious development, I thought, but then again - who was I to question the cooking needs of bacon? Upon opening the grill, I realized that something might be wrong by the way the bacon was all literally on fire. Each strip was a tiny inferno, feeding off its ample fat reserves and mocking my belated attempt to turn the grill off. When the fires had all gone out, I took a picture of the bacon-graveyard.

I'm sure we didn't want that bacon anyway.

This is approximately the time that my very helpful friends informed me that placing bacon directly onto a grill was probably not the best of ideas. Noted. 

See Kelsey's blog for a report of things that actually happened. I wasted all my words describing a bacon fire. 

I'm just going to leave this here.

That Would Have Been Too Easy

I had been planning on updating my blog shortly after the last post. I was just going to wait to find out about my waiver, which was only supposed to take a week to process. Well, that week turned into another week and then another week, and it was just today that I finally heard back. 

Anyway, I have been informed that my request for a waiver has been denied and that I should probably stop making plans revolving around a career as a Navy JAG. They didn't say that second part, but it was implied. Prospects for any sort of appeal are low to non-existent, as the decision letter made clear that the Navy was not currently accepting anyone, for any position, who could not pass the hearing test administered at MEPS. This seems like a policy that might have been communicated to me earlier...

I found myself expressing a similar sentiment.

It would have been very nice to have a job at this point, and I really did want to be a Navy JAG, but I'm very glad I at least found out with a year to go. I have proof that I don't suck at the application and interview process, and hopefully I will find something that I want to do equally as much that doesn't require me to take a frequency-specific hearing test in both ears. 

(Edit) Update: Ben Leatham has informed me that I can be his Chief of Staff when he is President. There will be no hearing test. I'm set.

A Good Excuse for the Times I am Accused of Not Listening

I will leave Kelsey the honor of describing all of the fun parts of the weekend. I've been up since 4:40AM and can't really remember anything other than the endless amusement park from hell that today has been.

Remember when I said that after medical processing I would either be in JAG for sure or learn something new about myself? Well play that PBS "The More You Know" theme because I am just chock full of new knowledge. First thing's first- I am extraordinarily healthy. My blood pressure is rock solid and I can go silly-looking calisthenic exercises in my underwear all day long and I have astoundingly good bladder control.  If anything, I thought that some moles on my back might give me problems, but NOPE- not one question about them. In fact, of all of the invasive and embarrassing procedures that I had the pleasure of waiting in line for Disney-style over a seven hour period, the only one that gave me any trouble was the least embarrassing and least intrusive of them all: the hearing test.

I was shocked, given that I have been successfully hearing things for my entire life and I have never had an issue with... not being able to hear something. Apparently, this is because my left ear is SUPER-OVERPOWERED and can hear gnats breathing in a meadow a hundred miles away, while my right ear has tricked me into thinking it works by processing basic information and then letting my left ear fill in the gaps. To be sure that this was truly the case, I went for a $100 ear-flushing (which was almost comically unpleasant) and took the test again. Same results.

Now, this does not mean I am out of the running for being in JAG, but it does serve as a reminder that there are still many things left that might end my journey early. This is potentially one of them. The doctor at medical processing recommended me for a hearing waiver, which he said he thought I should have because being a lawyer does not require the best of hearing (so long as you can hear what the judge is saying, which I can because, as earlier mentioned, I have never been aware of a hearing problem before today). We'll see how that goes. My JAG liaisons think that everything will be fine, but they don't get the deciding vote.  I will keep the blog updated. If I can't be a JAG, that will be really unfortunate, but it'll be better to learn early so that I can start looking for prosecutor/public defender jobs somewhere.

In other news, I also found out that the paper I wrote for my death penalty seminar has been accepted for publication in a law journal. I am still waiting to hear back from other potential journals, so I won't say where it is being published yet, but it will be published somewhere. If that was a karmic tradeoff for my disqualifying hearing condition, then I would say it was a Pyrrhic victory. Then again, I don't believe in karma.

How I Write My Blog Nowadays

Step 1: Check date of last blog post.

Step 2: Feign incredulity that the last time I wrote was so long ago.

Step 3: Check phone for pictures I have taken since the date of the last blog post.

Step 4: Try to remember why I took those pictures and what I have been doing the past two weeks.

July 4th was an excellent holiday, as always. I had somewhat of a long weekend (Kelsey did not, she had to work Friday and Saturday) since I had Thursday off. I did go into the office on Friday, but halfway through the day the assistant to the Special Counsel came in and asked me (and the one other intern who was there) why we were there. So I left. Kelsey and I mainly watched Game of Thrones and shopped at Costco. On Sunday, Kelsey threw a Wimbledon party and we ate cucumber sandwiches and scones and strawberries and cream. After that we went to get lunch with Brian and Kay during their stopover at Union Station (we didn't eat- too much hand-whipped cream. As a side-note, whipping cream by hand with only one whipping-thingy is time consuming. I'm sure everyone else already knew that.). After lunch, we went to a surprise party that Josh put together for Steph W. It had to be a surprise because if Steph had known it was a party she would have brought all the food and drinks regardless of us telling her not to. Hence the party's theme: a "Niceness Intervention." I'm not sure it worked.

This weekend Kelsey and I will be going down to North Carolina for Tyler and Bitsy's wedding. As luck would have it, my medical exam for the Navy was scheduled for Monday near Richmond, so I got Kelsey a bus ticket back (a nice bus, with wi-fi) and she is letting me borrow her car to drive from NC to Fort Lee, which is considerably closer to NC than it is to DC. The Navy has gotten me a hotel room, which is nice, and told me to be up at 5:30AM the next morning to be prodded all day, which is... less nice, but understandable. So, on Monday I will either know that I am medically qualified to be a Navy JAG or I will learn about a disease or disorder that was otherwise unknown to me that disqualifies me. Good information to have, either way. 

Now, onto the lone picture that I found on my phone:

I suppose I took this on my way home from work last week because they were demolishing a building and I thought it looked cool. Thank goodness I got a picture of this instead of, you know, all of the actually interesting things I did over the past 11 days. I would have stolen Kelsey's pictures, as usual, but her phone lost them when she loaded music onto it. 

Brief Stop in Annapolis

The DC summer is finally here. Gone are the predictable nice days with clear skies and highs in the 80's, and we have given a warm welcome to the insane and manic days of much intermittent storming and soup-like humidity. As I have functionally lived in a swamp since starting at William and Mary, this is not new to me and I have come to enjoy the extremes that may pop up on any given day. This past Thursday, for example, I experienced the loudest thunderclap of my life, followed by three minutes of torrential downpour, followed by sunshine, followed by a light drizzle.

I am relatively immune to the weather at my internship since I work in a room with no windows. My investigations are still a constant source of entertainment. This past week I found someone who I thought would be my first legitimate whistleblower case to refer to the official investigation division. I spoke on the phone with the complainant for an hour, verifying all of the information that he said he had and would send to me, before writing up my first case referral memo. The next day he sent me all of the promised documentation, and as it turned out it all evidenced information that was the exact opposite of what he had told me on the phone. I understand complainants misconstruing things to put themselves in a more favorable light, but when someone literally tells me that they have a document stating "A" and then they send me a document that says "B," I am just downright confused. I mean, I appreciate his help in closing his own case, I suppose.... Much of internship this week was taken up sitting on Scotusblog and waiting for the final opinions of the year to come down. I correctly predicted the dispositions of three of the big four cases (I did not see Fisher, the affirmative action case, being remanded- though I think the end result will still end up being what I had predicted).

For a date night Kels and I decided to get out of town and go see a musical in Annapolis, which is only about 40 minutes away from DC. We got free tickets to see [Title of Show] (that's the name of a musical, not a placeholder), and drove in on Thursday night. We were afraid that we might be a few minutes late due to an inability to find parking, so Kelsey called the theater and was told that an actor had just fallen and broken his leg so the show was canceled so... problem solved. They told us to come by anyway, and were very apologetic and nice and gave us free tickets to any of their shows in the future. They also gave us a tour of the theater and recommendations for dinner.

Downtown Annapolis reminded us of Williamsburg, with its very narrow streets and multitude of touristy businesses. 

On Friday I got foodtruck lunch with Jake and Alex and then I went out after work to celebrate with my friend Kacey (aka Kiki) due to her graduation from police academy. My smallest (yet fiercest) friend from college now carries a gun around DC and has the power to arrest people. I feel safer already. I was told that I could not bring her donuts on the job as that would be "frowned upon." 

Saturday we went to see "The Heat" with Emily Goo. Goo did not know that this movie was set in Boston, but when she realized that, it became her favorite movie ever. Kelsey and I thought it was very funny, too. Afterwards we met Jeff and Sara in Chinatown for some tapas. 

Today was another day of stormy-sunniness. Davia's birthday was this week, and since birthday brunches are the trend (I don't think I started that, as much as I would like to take credit) we had her birthday brunch today at Founding Farmer's!

Obligatory group photo.

After brunch, Kelsey and I walked around for the city a bit and went into one of the few remaining Smithsonians that we have not yet visited- the Renwick. This one had exhibits of American craftsmanship and was very well curated- we were captivated by a video showing all of the different ways wood can be joined together in furniture-making. 

I am an excellent alarm clock

I spent the first couple of weeks at internship reasonably underwhelmed with the work. All of the attorneys wanted me to help them with things, but I had to work with them very closely in order to do that. Sometimes I couldn't find anyone, so I just worked on revising a death seminar paper that I'm going to send out for fun (for publishing) in a month or so. This week, though, it appears that all of my demonstrations of semi-competence paid off as my bosses decided just to throw cases at me and let me go for it. My biggest accomplishment so far involved telling a woman that we were going to close her case and having her thank me for helping her. Thanks, negotiations class!

Also, while walking home from work on Friday I saw this truck, and thought it had a great slogan.

Geeks never have imaginary friends, because the geeks themselves were imaginary to begin with.

This weekend we got to leave the city behind and head to Woodberry (for the first time in over a year) to go to Zibby's wedding. When talking abstractly about her wedding back in 2004 (before she even knew who she was going to marry), Zibby asked me if I would jump out of a cake playing bagpipes at her bachelorette party. While that specific plan did not work out due to jobs, logistics, and the absence of a big enough cake, I was able to do something that I felt was a reasonable substitute. 

On the morning of Zibby's wedding, at 8AM, her family secreted me into their house with my kilt and my pipes. We quietly went up the stairs and I stood directly outside her bedroom door. I filled up the pipes with air as silently as possible, and then, when her parents gave the signal, I started blasting Scotland the Brave. Now she'll never forget exactly when and how she woke up on the day of her wedding. 

We've matured so much in the past ten years, right?

The wedding itself was wonderful. It was held in Woodberry's chapel and presided over by Woodberry's headmaster. Hornady, who very kindly let me and Kelsey stay with him on Friday night, played the organ. I spent the night talking to many teachers and colleagues from my days as both a student and a teacher at Woodberry, and I was glad to have the opportunity to introduce them all to Kelsey as well. Highlights of the night included a bet between teachers as to who could steal Dr. Campbell's (very stylish) hat, nerding out over the Supreme Court with my former American History teacher, and dancing with Kelsey and Rachael Fine. The best part, though, was seeing my Zibster so happy with her now-husband Ryan, whom I have liked ever since I met four or so years ago. They make a great pair and hopefully I will get to see them more often in the coming years.

Congratulations, Zib!

Costco and Hirshhorn

I had another good week at work. So far I've only gotten to talk to people who have been happy to talk to me, though, and my experiences may change once I've been authorized to speak with more... hostile parties. 

It is a well known fact that at least once during exams I decide that I am incredibly interested in some completely irrational hobby (the more disconnected from the exam I SHOULD be studying for, the better). This past exam period, I decided that I was going to get a dehydrator and make my own beef jerky and dried fruits. This past weekend I was able to go to Costco to fetch some supplies to finally make use of my exam-induced purchase, for which I have been mercilessly mocked since exams ended.

Kelsey recruited Justine and Patrick to help keep me subdued in Costco. A monumental task, certainly.

I purchased four bunches of bananas and three pounds of lean meat specifically for dehydrating. I also attempted to get Jeff and Noah interested in a giant freezer chest via text-message, but that was unsuccessful. 

I also just bought a lot of food, as per usual.

The first batch of dehydrated things were very difficult to make and not altogether that good. I under-dried the bananas (though Kelsey swears she loved them) and over-dried the jerky (though it was a lot of fun to have something to chew for an hour at work). Normally, such initial failures would stop me from second attempts, but in this case my desire for cheap beef jerky has won out and I have another batch that is going in the dehydrator shortly after this post is published. 

This weekend, Kelsey took me to see a production of The Full Monty. It was also National Donut Day, so we went to Krispy Kreme for our free donuts.

The picture of mine is on Kelsey's blog. She won't share pictures with me anymore because I end up using all of hers and don't leave any unique pictures for her to use on her own blog.

The musical was very funny and had excellent production values. The theater is doing A Few Good Men in August and I'd like to go back and see that.

On Saturday, we met up with David and Shannon at our old crepe place from when we lived in Foggy Bottom last summer. Afterwards we went to the Hirshhorn. Even though I don't care for a majority of modern art, I love going to a museum where I have literally no idea what I'm going to see. Television static with tape over it, tubes dangling from the ceiling in a maze formation, a floor made of beeswax, snails eating cabbage (to symbolize the deterioration of the brain), a pitch-black walk-in room in which a hologram of a tiger occasionally bursts out and growls, etc.... There's always something new. And bizarre. 

Saturday's exhibit was relatively tame.

Except for a giant demonic Easter Bunny sculpture/statute/mixed media thing. That was terrifying. Or cute. I can't decide.

Today I played racquetball (with Noah) for the first time in a year and a half. Now that's a fun cardio workout. 

Special Counseling

This week marked the start of my summer internship at the Office of Special Counsel. There are many "special counsels" set up within the government, but this one is the most special. We investigate complaints about prohibited personnel practices within the executive branch of the government. 

That doesn't sound exciting. 

I'll try again. We investigate complaints from whistleblowers who reported fraud/abuse/illegality within their chain of command and were then punished or fired for that report. 

This is my desk. I have a desk and my own computer. And a badge. Very important to have a badge.

I enjoy the work so far. I'm working on real cases and I have a fun fellow intern and a very nice boss who has been giving me more responsibility and authority every day. After work I can take the bus halfway back home and work out at the gym (which I have not done all year but which I now am doing as part of a work-out-to-avoid-future-embarrassment routine).

In other news, Rupert and Harper have been having regular visits and aren't trying to kill each other anymore. They aren't quite friends yet, but they are certainly in a cold-war stage.

The Weekend of Exceptional Life Lessons

This past week has been very eventful. I will leave the MOST eventful stuff to Kelsey, though, as she has already summed up its events in this blogpost.

The day after my final exam was turned in I went on a walkabout. That is, I went outside (where I had not been in a while) and just walked about wherever I wanted to go. Everyone else was at work/school so I took a bus over to the Mall and started at the outdoor sculpture garden.

Contemplating modern art is always much more palatable when you can compare it to taking exams.

My main goal, though, was to get to the Air and Space Museum's new exhibit on time and navigation. Why? Because learning how clocks work is just about the most exciting thing in the world, especially after exams. 

And because I always love walking past the Apollo 11 Command Module right after the entrance.

The time and navigation exhibit was amazing. Whoever put it together really thought carefully about the progression of the exhibit and what sorts of multimedia should be present. It started with a brief explanation of ocean navigation before the 1500's and the very real dangers of just plain getting lost and having no idea how to get back home. You wouldn't think "accurate timekeeping" would be the answer to a navigation question, but it is, and this was presented fantastically well with an interactive game involving plotting a ship's location using a sextant a clock. 

You had to align the sextant with a certain star on the back wall and then the game showed you a PDF of an old star-chart where you could see the longitude given by the angle cross-referenced with the current time.

The exhibit also had a reasonably well-acted pictures in frames talking to each other (featuring an Apollo-era astronaut, a WWII-era pilot, a justifiably confused 1800's-era ship captain, a modern-day military navigator, and a very confused modern-day person who just stumbled into the center frame) in order to explain, again, the basics of how time is integral to navigation. There were examples of clocks from the very earliest pendulum designs all the way up to a cesium atomic clock, and with each new clock there was some sort of explanation about the increased navigational accuracy that the clock's invention allowed. 

I'm making clocks sound like fun, right? Right? 

I liked it so much that I forced Kelsey to come see it in the middle of one of our runs on Sunday. That was before her car got broken into. Speaking of which, we have a video of the guy who broke into Kelsey's car walking away with her purse. This is courtesy of the very nice nerdy couple with excellent surveillance technology.

Kelsey was moments away from screaming "enhance!" while living out her CSI dreams in this couple's apartment. 

Walking into a Buzz Cut?

Today, with the completion and turning in of one 40-page paper that I like and one 25-page paper that I hope earns forgiveness from my professor, I am finished with exams. As always, it has been the least fun part of the semester and I am so glad that I only have to do this two more times.

I start at the Office of Special Counsel on the 28th, and until then I'll be doing small projects for Street Law, Inc. and doing a bunch of paperwork.

I suppose I should explain the paperwork. Actually, it goes along with the "exciting news" I referenced in my last post. Actually, it goes all the way back to this post, when I mentioned an application that I had been working on since August. Actually, it goes back a bit further than that. I might make a post explaining more at some later date if and when this becomes official, but I will keep it short here.

For various reasons, I have been very interested in the JAG Corps since near the end of my 1L year when I was doing job research. JAG officers are lawyers in Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard who prosecute and defend during a court martial, give operational legal advice on the law of war, help service members with various legal issues, etc.... For additional various reasons, out of the five different types of JAG I vastly preferred Navy.

Navy JAG does its hiring differently from everyone else. In fact, you can apply as a 2L. So that's what I did back in October. Predictably, I did not get in during that round. I was expecting that, because the Navy gets WAY more applications for JAG than it has positions available. For 2012 it was something like a 4% acceptance rate. This is the primary reason I didn't tell anyone about this before now.

Anyway, I went into 2L year trying to structure my course load to make the Navy like me, and I applied again in February. I found out on Friday, May 3rd that this application was accepted, which means that if I pass a medical exam and security check I will be a Navy JAG officer starting sometime after I pass the bar in 2014 (I suppose that assumes I'm going to pass the bar). This is exactly what I want to do and is my #1 choice for career out of law school. I'm very excited about it, but I'm also trying to not make a big deal out of it in case I don't pass the commissioning process for some reason.

If everything goes well, then to answer the question you haven't asked: yes, I will pretty much be Tom Cruise from A Few Good Men. But taller.

Passed the MPRE

I learned today that I'm ethical enough to take the Bar Exam in any state or territory of the United States. Looks like eschewing studying to work on a cookie truck is a solid life choice, after all. There has also been some other exciting news from the law front that I am not yet prepared to share in blog form but that has made this exam period considerably less stressful. I will write a longer post about that and what it means after exams are over (the 14th).

Until then, this is the reason I study at my place or the library rather than Kelsey's place during exam period:

It's Kels's computer, but the same applies to mine.

The More You Know

I'm studying for Corporations right now. Part of Corporations law is being able to understand basic accounting. This is great, since I took accounting in college and had a good accounting teacher. Also, I taught economics for a year, and sometimes understanding accounting requires an understanding of microeconomics. That's not really going to help me on the exam, but I would like to think that it will. 

At the very least, I have determined (during my week in the library basement) that this package of cookies is the most economically rational thing to purchase from the vending machine from both a caloric and volume standpoint. 

Wrapping up 2L

Just one more week of classes and then it's exam-time. My exam period is going to be a bit different from previous semesters because my finals consist of:

One real exam
One self-scheduled exam
One portfolio (Street Law)
One non writing requirement (20 page) paper
One writing requirement (40 page) paper
and
One trial (for trial practice)

My high school students somehow realized that, even though they have school until June, I will be leaving them at the end of this week. At the end of class today they presented me with a card. Jessica, my amazing cooperating teacher at the school, assures me that she had nothing to do with it. It was very, very sweet of them. I have to get back to researching for my non writing requirement paper (only 20 pages? Sounds like non-writing to me!) but I figured I would post the card because some of the notes on it are hilarious. I especially like "I never took you but you seem cool." from a "Jacob" who, indeed, I did not teach this year.