sad

tonight i went back to my old apartment for the first time in over a month. mark moved into his new place today, and he is turning over the keys on thursday, so i have to get the last, last, last of my things out this week.
that empty apartment was very sad. and then i found this in and amongst the things i was collecting; a housewarming card from when we moved in:

"Heather + Mark! Congrats on shacking up...now for the next step!"

i am okay, i'm not spending the evening weeping into a bottle of gin, or anything. i'm just a little sad, but i think that's okay, i think it might even be a good thing, sort of. it wasn't a little thing, and to not be sad about it would just diminish it. so i'll be sad for a bit.

More or Less

MORE
Sleep
Studying
Physical Exercise
Vegetables
LESS
Booze
Sugar
Facebook
Spending money

Guess what I am not doing today?

Running half a marathon!

Today was supposed to be the day I ran in the Fall Classic Half Marathon. Ha ha ha. My training went well at first, but with the two weeks of utter chaos that was moving into my new place, and the ensuing and ongoing utter chaos of running two weeks behind in law school, I just let it slide. Disapointing, but necessary, since I haven't yet mastered the fine art of not having to sleep.

I am still running a bit, but no where near the level that would allow me to go 23-ish km without dying. I still hope to try a half marathon in the not-too-distant future, but for now it is on the shelf.

In the meantime, I will continue to pursue other athletic pursuits, including Rugby, step aerobics and dancing up a storm at the bar, which is not, as you can see below, without its own hazards.

Drinking 2, Blogging 0

Another Friday night, another day of blogging sacrificed to my complete inability to have JUST 2 beers. I swear, 2 is my precise threshold for thinking that several more is a great idea. So after the beer-up at school, it just seemed like a super idea to head to Darby's with the rest of the Rugby team, and Jodi, my new partner in all booze-related crime. So, I am a little more tired than I had originally planned to be today, but I am still at the library plugging away.

Good News and Bad News

A few weeks ago I sent out a bunch of resumes to firms in Calgary for summer jobs (Calgary firms hire WAY more first year students than Vancouver, plus you know, I like Calgary), and today I got a call from one, Fraser, Milner and Casgrain, who wanted to schedule an interveiw in two weeks. Yay! I might get an incredibly useful experience and get paid lots of money.

I have to buy a suit.

Multi-tasking

Between 9 and 10 pm today I did all of the following:

- Had 3 simultaneous MSN chats (Dad, Keith and Jodi)

- Baked muffins out of black bananas

- Booked my flight home for Christmas (Dec 19 to Jan 5)

- Watched "Criminal Minds"

I feel like I accomplished a lot :)

You probably had to be there

Last week, on Friday I wore my hair in pigtails. At lunch that day I was hanging out wth some of my school friends, and we were talking about hilarious socks. I mentioned that I had a pair of socks with monkeys on them, and I promised to wear the said socks sometime this week. The converstation meandered on, and eventually I found myself talking about "The Life I used to Have"; which really just means speaking about all the enormous changes that I've gone through in the past few months. I didn't really mean anything by it, mostly when I bring up the LIUTH it is in jest. And so it was on Friday as I was complaining about the material comforts I had to give up for law school "For this I gave up a 22nd floor apartment with a view of english bay, fine leather furniture and big screen TV!"

"Yes, but now you have pig-tails and monkey socks," replied my friend.

And this was just about the funniest thing I ever heard.

Now I have pigtails and monkey socks.

New Work Schedule

When I first started my job, I was consistently scheduled on Fridays and Sundays, which sort of sucks since Fridays are Beer-Up nights at Law school. I politely inquired whether I was going to be working every Friday FOREVER, and my manager said that it wouldn't be a problem to change it. So, here it is a few weeks later, and I'm moved off of Fridays, so I now work Sunday nights and Monday nights.
Tonight was my first Monday shift, and now I am all messed up, and keep thinking that it's Sunday and I don't have school tomorrow. Which is sort of a bummer. But I get to drink beer on Friday. :)

A long weekend for you,

just another weekend for me.
I can't help but feel mildly cheated out of the whole long weekend thing. I mean I don't benefit at all. I realize you all want to throw bricks at me right now, but I'm just saying...

Do-Over

Tonight I begged off going out to the pub and actually gave myself a night to myself.
Microwave popcorn, root beer, and a favorite old book. And most importantly, I am going to bed in about 20 minutes.
I was going to try a do a little more reading (for school), but I just decided to relax and enjoy myself a little. Besides, I'll get more done tomorrow if I am well-rested. Right?

This is my friday post!

I had these great plans for tonight. I was going to study until 6, when the library closed, and then head home, go for a run, have a bubble bath, watch a movie and have an early bed time. Have a little "me" time. It was going to be sweet.
And I did study. But as I was making my way to the bus stop I felt this magnetic pull towards the Pit, the campus bar, where a few of my buddies, and the next thing I know, I am downing the better half of a pitcher. Then the next thing I know, I am at the UBC film society's Big Lebowski "beverage" garden. And the next thing I know I am at a bar on Broadway downing the better half of another pitcher.
So, I failed to post before midnight, which I guess means I failed the NaBloPoMo challenge. But I submit, that I have posted validly for Friday, since I haven't been to bed yet. It is technically still my Friday.

Gaining some momentum

I am finally working hard. 13 days of classes to go (because I don't have school on Mondays), and I am finally doing my readings and reviewing my notes. My goal for the next few days is to total 32 hours of studying for Thursday through Monday. So far, today, I have knocked 6 hours off. The key is sadly, as I have concluded many times before, but always wish weren't true, if that I have to stay at school and work in the library. My focus at home just sucks.
So, this weekend I will be at the library. A lot. But a lot of other people will be there too. I'm not the only one.

My Stereo ate my CD

My car stereo is refusing to eject the CD that is currently in it. This is problem, because commercial radio makes me want to drive my car straight into a brick wall after about 10 minutes, and while the CD in the stereo is a great one (Picaresque by The Decemberists), I do not fancy listening to it every singe time I drive for ever. I'm not sure what to do. I am temped to try and extricate the thing myself. But I should probably get a professional. I'm not sure who to ask. Subaru? Do they really do the stereo? I'll bet this isn't covered under the warranty.

My Weekend on a Disney Ride

I distinctly remember shortly after I moved to Vancouver, feeling very much like an outsider, because I hardly knew anybody. Back in Calgary, run-intos were pretty common-place. You could rely on running into somebody you knew at the club, at the mall, downtown or where ever, maybe one time in a month. When I first moved to Vancouver, I remember thinking, “I’ll never run into anyone I know again”

Well, this weekend was an absolute freak show of running into people. In addition to the run-into mentioned in the previous post, I also happened to run into an old actuarial buddy outside the bar on Saturday night. Furthermore, on Sunday, the girl who I was relieving at the store had her friend come by and meet her as she was leaving. Turns out her friend is also a friend of mine and the wife* of a friend from Hewitt. So random. I had even met the girl from the store before, years ago at a poker game, although neither of us had remembered it.

[* I cannot believe I am reaching a point in my life where I have to refer to people as “wife” instead of “girlfriend”]

Unexpected

Yesterday, on the way to work, I bumped into a friend of Mark’s on the bus. I was a little nervous as I called his name to get his attention and say hello. You know, the ex’s friend - it could be a little awkward. Maybe he’d even be a little mean, a little cold, out of loyalty to Mark. I would understand, I suppose. You stick by your friends first, even in the most amicable of splits.

He HUGGED me. It was so unexpected, and it was so nice. I think it says a lot about a person when his friends are the kind of people who can be so gracious.

The muscle I strained the most

I woke up this morning, swallowed and thought, "Uh-oh". For a brief moment I thought I was getting sick.

Then I remembered yesterday. Being one of three players out of ten who knew where bodies ought to be meant that I yelled a lot. Constantly. With the yelling. So that alone would have made my throat a little raw today.

But couple that with the fact that I then spent the better part of 8 hours at a bar last night with loud, loud music playing and I am pretty sure that 90% of my communication yesterday was carried out in my "Outdoor Voice".

So in addition to not moving very fast today, I am also not speaking much.

Saturday is a Rugby Day

Today the UBC Law Women's Rugby team had our season opener. In the relentless drizzle we turned 8 rookies and 3 veterans loose on the pitch, and the results were outstanding. Let me say upfront that yes, we lost, 20-10. But still, for an extremely inexperienced team, that's an amazing score to lose by. First off, we scored two trys! Amazing. And we held them up time and again to keep them from scoring more than the 4 that they did.

I had one of my best Rugby days ever, managing to touch down one of our trys (but it was what I would call a "team try" as the whole team was working their butts off to get me over the line) and I was named "Man of the Match." I've never been Man of the Match. It's like the MVP of the game, and you have to get up a drink a boat (beer) race with the MoM from the other team (we won the boat race, thank you). So it was like , my best Rugby day ever.

Now I am going out for more beer. Assignments be damned!

She used to work at Hooters

Here at Law school we refer to our final, comprehensive notes in each class as Consolidated Annoted Notes, or CANs for short.
This handy acronym led to me uttering the following last night about a certain upper year student:

"She's famous for her CANs"

One day I hope to be famous for my CANs.

Want to play trains?

Like many of my law school friends, I have joined a wonderful organization at school known as the Law Student’s Legal Advice Program, or LSLAP. LSLAP is a free legal aid society run by law students and two supervising lawyers. We handle legal issues that run the gamut from landlord-tennant issues to ICBC insurance claims to criminal charges. Some of my class-mates have already been to court and represented clients at trial.

My experiences thus far have been significantly less gratifying. I am assigned to a clinic in south Vancouver, in a relatively “nice” neighborhood, that doesn’t seem to offer up much in the way of complex legal problems. I’ve had two clients, neither of which had a bona fide legal problem, and one of whom almost yelled at me when I tried to explain that with only 2 lawyers on staff it wasn’t exactly priority one for us to deal with her trivial issue (even though it wasn’t a solid legal problem, everything still needs to be reviewed by a lawyer before it goes out). So it’s not exactly taxing, but on the other hand, I am not really contributing much, or gaining a ton of experience.

Overall, I’ve been having second thoughts about participating in this program. A lot of people have suggested to me that most law firms could not care less about participation in LSLAP. It’s yet another thing I have to stress about when I have a client issue I need to deal with. It’s one other night I could be looking after my own needs, getting readings done, or seeing my friends. But despite that, I have been making the effort, and hoping that I will be assigned a good case, leading to solid experience.

But seriously, this is the final straw. The community centre we run our clinic out of has moved us out of the room we usually use and into the day care centre. I know we are a free legal aid society and we don’t have to keep up much in the way of appearances, but this is ridiculous.