Emily Goo's Epic Birthday of Epicness

In what will be a total surprise to no one, Emily Goo's birthday weekend in NYC was every bit as Goo-ish as possible. Yes, everyone wore suits- even the ladies. Yes, we all posed for pictures with obnoxiously large cigars (just for holding, not for smoking). Yes, we ate at a restaurant in which the only possible orders were "more meat" or "no more meat." No, there was not as much sleeping as any normal person might need. 

Trevor and Meg were very kind and allowed me, Kelsey, and Josh to stay with them in Hoboken on Friday night. I had no idea it was so easy to get from Hoboken to NYC- fifteen minutes flat to 33rd street in Manhattan. We had a more difficult time figuring out the correct way to get to Hoboken from Newark- the short conclusion of that story is that we have several brand new one-way tickets from Newark to Hoboken if anyone... you know... wants them.

Brunch by the river. Shortly after this picture was taken we sprinted to the PATH station to take a train into NYC and barely made it on time for a matinee of Phantom- one of my birthday gifts. The guy playing the phantom was an understudy and missed a few lines but still was the best phantom acting-wise out of the four or so that I have seen.

Free cupcakes on Easter Saturday

 Aaand we're back (on the Dupont metro escalator).

My Disney Post Additions

You may have seen Kelsey's comprehensive and extensive Disney post. I also worked on that one. But I wanted to take a moment on my own blog to tell the story of a brave little girl at Disney who conquered her fears and learned an important lesson about doing things that scare you. 

This is the little girl. See her sitting in Eeyore's hut? Very sad.

She didn't want to go on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, but she went anyway. And she screamed her head off.

Right middle center.

She felt similarly about Dinosaur but had already conquered her fears so put up less of a fuss about it.

Still screamed though. Middle, second from left. 

That's all I really wanted to add to the Disney post that was already written. 

Bar Application Submitted

I had to borrow ten dollars from Sara, find a public notary to notarize on two separate pages (I'm certain there is rampant fraud of people who just want to take the bar exam so badly that they are willing to steal identities in order to do it), go to the post office twice, have North Carolina send me my complete driving record, send requests to two separate offices at William and Mary, prepare five friends for the future harassment of bar officials seeking confirmation that I am a person who will not single-handedly wreck the integrity of the justice system, describe in detail everywhere I have lived in the past ten years, and photocopy the double sided sections (but ONLY the double sided sections!) of the application packet, but I have officially mailed in my application to take the bar exam in Maryland.

If I was a good boy and did absolutely everything right without forgetting to sign my name on page fifty-three or something like that, then I will be rewarded by the generous invitation to sit for two days taking an extended test that will cover nothing that I have actually learned in law school. If I pass that test, then around twelve weeks later I will be graciously allowed to join the illustrious ranks of a profession that, in the eyes of a vast majority of the public, is best known by its complete lack of integrity and general competence.

But I'm going to Disney World on Sunday, so today was a good day.

On Things That Refuse to Die

The past month has been excellent. There was a trip down to NC for the weekend, there was House of Cards, there was a fun second-round interview in Baltimore, there was much theater, there was much mock trial, and there were many snow days. The more interesting of these things are covered in Kelsey's blog.

I feel that I have a duty to continue reporting on the status of my ear on this blog, though, because some day the story will have some sort of ending. That day is not today. 

On February 11th, I got the go-ahead from my ENT to get another audiogram. I was not hopeful about it, since I didn't notice much of a change in my hearing from before the surgery. Of course, this entire issue arose because I didn't notice ANYTHING about my hearing before this past summer, so "things I notice" isn't exactly the most trustworthy of tests. 

So, just to recap: in August (and presumably from then until December 31st), the hearing in my left ear was fine but the hearing in my right ear was strangely not-fine.

Left ear- fine. Right ear- not fine. 

The numbers on the Y axis reflect how much louder a sound had to be (at each frequency represented on the X axis) for me to be able to hear it like a normal person. You can see it varies from 20 decibels (a whisper-volume louder) to 40 decibels (something between a whisper-volume and a normal conversation-volume louder). I failed my hearing test for the Navy due to the little circle under 2K that sits at 40. Every other number was okay. 

So, let's compare these results to the numbers that I got back from my appointment yesterday:

Left ear- still normal. Right ear- the high frequencies remained the same and the low frequencies took a crash. The takeaway from this is that my right-ear hearing is now back in the "normal" range and is no longer considered "mild hearing loss." I was surprised, but I'll go along with it.

So, theoretically, if I took the hearing test now for the Navy, I would pass. That said, they would have to LET me retake the test and possibly give me a waiver (the thing that they are not fond of giving me) for the surgery that I had, depending on how you categorize it. Given how the process has played out so far, I am not getting my hopes up. Part of me even hoped that I would fail my audiology exam yesterday so that I would have closure on the issue. But that did not happen, and that is the story of how my Navy JAG quest continues to stubbornly refuse to die.

Anecdotes

I had an interview this past Friday for a prosecutorial position Baltimore. I enjoyed taking the MARC train up, and I was very pleased to discover that Baltimore had a free bus system that ran past Penn Station and went to exactly where I needed to go. Given the weather conditions, this was ideal.

On the bus, one of the other riders stated to no one in particular: "I'm trying to get to (location). Does anyone know what's the next bus I need to catch?" I have not seen this happen in D.C.

Then another rider responded: "Oh yes, I'm going out that direction myself, I'll show you the stop." I have also not seen this happen in D.C. I looked around the rest of the bus to see if anyone else was displaying any sort of sign that this interaction was unusual. I saw nothing. I decided that Baltimore was a generally friendlier place than D.C. and that I would relate this specific anecdote in my meeting if asked why I wanted to work in Baltimore.

After a few minutes, I was at my stop and got off the bus. I started walking towards the appropriate building where I would be having my interview. A woman behind me started screaming that someone had stolen her purse. I turned around to see someone run into the alley being pursued by two presumably helpful Baltimorians. Since it was more of a mixed anecdote, I decided not to tell that particular story during my interview.

The interview itself went well, though it was very different from any other interview that I have ever had. Apparently in prosecutor's offices they actually care whether or not you know the law and aren't content to talk about music or TV shows for the duration of the interview. I'm okay with that. I have a second round interview in a couple of weeks, so at least a couple of my answers must have been legally sound.

On Friday night Kels and I went to the Tempest cast party at Josh/Steph/Dan's place. Steph made ALL the food, as usual, including some new blue mousse stuff made with white chocolate that was excellent. We then played Two Rooms and a Boom, which is a card-game variant on mafia.

On Saturday night we went into Alexandria to celebrate David and Shannan's engagement at Tim's place. I spent most of that evening heckling David, because that's just what we do. Then we watched Hangover II, which was relevant because David and Shannan are going to have one of their weddings (it's complicated) in Thailand.

On Sunday I helped judge a college mock trial tournament. My co-judge was a guy who had been practicing in New York for the past twenty years and he liked to talk a lot, so I was the Teller to his Penn. The college students were a lot better at a lot of mock trial than me, but I was a lot better at pretending I was better at mock trial than they were so they listened to what I said.

Next week is the GGSS performance of The Tempest, directed by Ben and Sara and starring Josh and Dan and Justine and Xander and many of our other favorite people. Also, we have been invited to a party this Sunday for some sort of sporting event. And food. I'm in for the food.

Snow Day!

This week I will end up going to only one class due to snow and MLK day. I am okay with this and I used a majority of the free time between Friday and today to go about the very useful and important work of playing board games with friends and eating.

Today, though, I decided to be somewhat useful to my future self and start the bar application process. For various reasons, including the fact that all of my interviews (including one this Friday) tend to be there, I have decided to take the Maryland bar. I have spent the past several hours listing every address where I have ever lived, ever. In the "reasons for moving" column I have put down "school" in almost every single entry. I'm glad knowing that I lived on Monroe Hall in 2005 is so terribly important to the bar examination committee. Next up: every credit card account number that I have ever held. Should be fun!

In more exciting news, Kels and I will be going to a party this coming weekend to celebrate my old roommate, David Husband, who has just gotten engaged to his girlfriend Shannan. I got to know them as a couple pretty well while David and I were living together a couple of summers ago, and I'm very happy for them both.

The First of the Last, or the Last of the First

I keep confusing myself as to whether this is the first week of my last semester of classes, or the last semester when I will have a first week of classes. Either way, while I was thinking of it the milestone passed.

Last Friday, at the end of my courtroom technology class, we were able to go to the judge's court and play with all of his technology. It was very impressive.

Since he is a federal judge, he gets the nice stuff.

This week I started my three classes that I have for the rest of the semester. Two of the three were chosen 100% based on the reputation of the professor, and if the first sessions have shown anything it is that choosing classes based on professor reputation continues to be the best way to pick discretionary classes.

First I have Complex Litigation, which is all about large multi-plaintiff lawsuits. Not as boring as it sounds, AND there are a few really important class action cases going in front of the Supreme Court this semester, so we get to learn it as it happens.

After Complex Litigation, I have my Supreme Court Seminar. This was my top choice class and will basically let me geek out about current term Supreme Court cases and get credit for it. Everyone in the class is responsible for understanding pretty much all of the cases, but we each get one case that we are responsible for. By "responsible for" I mean that we are in charge of prepping the judges at a moot court where the lawyer who will be arguing the case in front of the Supreme Court will test out his or her argument. My case is about whether police officers should have something called "qualified immunity" (can't be sued so long as they aren't violating clearly established law) if they shoot a suspect to end a high-speed chase. Should be fun!

Finally I have Decedents' Estates, which is basically a class about how terrible things will happen to you if you don't have a plan in place regarding your healthcare and property. Also it explains how nowadays is the best time in the past two hundred years to die if you want to create a Downton Abbey-esque estate that will last forever and be completely immune to federal taxes. Hooray for the aristocratic renaissance.

I went up to Gaithersburg today to help out my little adoptive mock trial team there, and it was so much fun to teach a little again. The kids were so smart and eager- they have no idea what they're doing but they are doing it as hard as they can, which is everything that you want from first-timers. When I demonstrated how you could frame facts differently depending on what you want a jury or judge to think they looked at me like I had just done an amazing magic trick. I'll be helping them out over the next two months as they compete in four rounds against other high schools. That's a lot of rounds, so they'll be experts by then.

I think that's everything new that's going on. The ear is healing well- it'll take a month for it to "settle" and so until then it will (hypothetically) slowly improve in hearing every day while making weird popping noises that only I can hear. I can already hear close to what I could before the surgery, so that's good. And one last thing- this past weekend was Kels's and my second anniversary! I'm sure that you can't believe she has put up with me for so long. I certainly can't, but I'm very glad she has.