Dear Anonymous

I have been extraordinarily remiss in thanking you for your comments and words of encouragement. I blame the lackluster of my current state of affairs for my prolonged absence. I'm pretty sure nobody wants to hear about how I am, per usual, super behind in all of my classes and how the only thing I seemed to have mastered is a shameful abandonment of all discernable smidgens of discipline in all aspects of my life. (Again, per usual.) My kickball team did recently beat our opponents 24 to 6, epitomizing unnecessary awesomeness, but I feel that at 27, if that is the only bright spot in your life, you need to do some serious rethinking. Any and all suggestions welcome!

DO BETTER

The motto of my last 12 months has been FAILURE. Although it is a frequent theme in the story of my life, I seem to have been especially hell bent on emphasizing and maximizing it this past year. I don't have the heart to go into details anymore. Just as the The Stupid List in college, when it reaches the point of continually starring me, to the total exclusion of other qualified participants, it becomes tedious, tragic and even more pathetic. I have decided that my new goal is simply to DO BETTER. (And having set the bar pretty low, this shouldn't exactly be a challenge...) As I find myself in the agonizingly familiar state of failing on all fronts, I feel a bit like our pal Charlie Sheen (well, minus the cocaine, hookers, trashed hotel rooms, rants and job loss...).

As I am on the cusp of turning 27, to remedy this malady and rescue myself from the relentless rut I find myself in, I am going to start DOING things. The main source of my woes is my club foot. Despite getting the screws out of it last week, it is still sore and uncooperative. Since it plagues me no matter what I do, I have decided I am just going to deal with the pain and exercise anyway. This will likely require me to go see a physical therapist, which I detest, but at this point, I am willing to try anything.

I am also going to try to adhere more to a raw diet. I scuffed at a friend who recently went vegan for Lent and asked if I'd ever done it, but I am starting to re-evaluate my total dismissal. A raw diet is akin to a vegan diet, with heavy emphasis on vegetables, fruits and nuts, but also recognizes proteins such as fish, which I can deal with. I also don't agree with the vegan philosophy of no animal by products. I'm all for furry creatures being happy, but I'll kill your cow in a minute to savor some sweet, sweet meat and have a nice, durable pair of shoes... Thus, ideologically, I am much more in line with the Native Americans belief of respecting animals, hunting only for food and preventing superfluous waste by using as much of the animal and its byproducts as possible.

As for keeping my spirit soaring instead of sinking, I will not sleep in past 9:30 am on any day and I will refrain from playing computer games instead of completing assignments or reading books. I will also try to focus more on the positive. Instead of watching a movie like The King's Speech and wondering how the fuck a movie about a man with a crippling speech impediment could've won an Oscar instead of a gold star at the Special Olympics, instead of being annoyed that said 2 hour movie could've been summed up in 2 minutes: stutterer finally manages to make a speech, instead of wishing that the film could've focused more on the capricious older brother and his scandalous lust after a shameless divorcee with some rumored Shanghai boudoir skills, I will instead try to be happy that determination and tireless hard work can prevail against cruel odds. But, that might be biting off a little more than I can chew, so for now, I just won't watch movies that may potentially bring out the horrible human being in me. I'll focus on encouraging the more humble and likable person that I can be... As I said, I want, need and can, DO BETTER!!

2011

I rang in the new year asleep in my bed. Yep. So surly, sad and disgruntled was I, that I called it a night at 10pm and went to sleep. I did set my alarm to 11:55pm to text Happy New Year to a few friends, but apparently didn't wake up until almost 12:15am. C'est la vie.







'Tis now 2pm and I am still in my pjs, having dragged myself out of bed about 30 minutes ago. Seeing as I have already chronicled the most noteworthy things I did in 2010 (snowshoe up a mountain, finish my first year of law school and break my back and foot falling out out a tree) I don't feel a more detailed wrap up is necessary.


I have resolved to snap out of the funk I've been in lately and do more embracing of joie de vivre. (I find that vague, unspecific goals are the only ones that I can readily achieve, largely because there is a wide range of subjectivity in whether or not they've been accomplished!) For now, I am going to go to the store to buy a 2011 calendar. Baby steps.

LAS VEGAS!!!

I have never been to Las Vegas before, so I was pretty darn excited about going with my kickball team for the national championship fun games. Given the fact that I am who I am, everyone was extremely worried about my ability to stay alive in Vegas, the place where even virgin choir girls from Iowa go insane. Survival suggestions included wearing a "blackout helmet camera" to record my performances, tattooing my name, insurance and hotel information on my arm, memorizing the number of a bail bondsman, avoiding trees and not getting married. One person even prayed to God on my behalf. Naturally, this made me even more determined to behave myself and show them all who wears the big-girl pants. (That and getting arrested/ dying would pretty much terminate my legal aspirations...)

I arrived at 9:15pm on Friday, ready to join my mates in Sin City. Then I saw the taxi queue. I was forced to join a Guinness World Record worthy human centipede of a line, sandwiched betwinxt two smokers in the warm Nevada night. So vexed was I that when the ditz to my rear puffed some smoke from her cigarette at me, I blew it right back into her face, eliciting a startled gasp and a pissed off glare as she took a final drag and snuffed it out. I was warily reminded that Vegas is like another country, in that smoking ANYWHERE is permissible. 35 minutes later, I was finally on my way. Driving down the strip looked just like the views on CSI, so I didn't experience any genuine awestruckness. Upon arriving at our hotel, the MGM Grand, however, I was struck by the number of people who didn't appear to be in club attire--another myth I seem to have fabricated about Vegas. Needless to say, as the wardrobe I'd packed for the weekend consisted entirely of the fashion extremes of kickball clothes and flashy dresses, I felt a little self-conscious and a whole lot hookerish headed off to rendezvous with the others at a place called Bill's Salon and Casino in an shiny, cheetah print tube dress. Though I was glad my club foot prevented me from wearing anything that even vaguely resembled a high heel, because there was a lot of walking to be done.

At Bill's I found my teammates at the craps tables. I watched a few rounds before I decided to stop standing there like a dumb call-girl and play. (I am not one for gambling, readily admitting defeat when I lose and considering myself a winner when I break even.) The dealers were fun and the cocktail waitresses kept the shamefully watered down drinks coming. Despite setting a 1am curfew, Hanley, our captain, was up and overloaded on serotonin from his winnings, so we kept playing. There were highs and there were lows, there were desperate buy-ins and curses to the dice rollers on other side of the table that Fortune was not smiling on. There was even a drunk bitch who hurled green Appletini all over her hands/ some guy's shoe/ the casino floor, as her friend tried to drag her towards the bathroom. At 4am, everyone had pretty much broken even or close enough that the smart thing to do was cash out and leave.

Hanley then warned us not to go eat, promising that we'd regret the lack of sleep in the morning. Of course our room group took this as a direct challenge to do just that. Inspired by talk of a $5 steak breakfast, Martin and I abandoned the pack. After some failed attempts, we saw a sign for a $5.99 Rib-eye Steak and Eggs breakfast in bright lights. We were told we had to wait 20 minutes. Sleep was starting to sound like a real good idea, but we powered through. Martin ordered his medium-rare and to his thinly veiled disgust, I ordered mine well-done. To my amusement, both our steaks were cooked the same, probably warmed up in the microwave, the cooks well aware that the taste buds of people dining at near 5am in Vegas are likely barely functioning.

The next morning, all fitted in our snazzy, walking Adidas ad uniforms, we were the first team on the bus. I was starting to think that the fun games were imaginary until we saw the other teams start to trickle out. Suddenly we were surrounded by beer coolers, Mardi Gras beads, leopard face paint, booty shorts and noise. The ride to games featured a host of Asian massage parlors and run down strip malls. Viva Las Vegas indeed... By the time we got to the fields, we realized how hot it was going to be and were sorry we didn't have a tent. (While everyone else was busy warding off cancer and applying sunblock, Martin and I started our customary "Who's darker?" contest. So tired of arbitrarily being judged the loser, I almost went to go search for baby oil to lather myself in put a final stop to this nonsense.) We won our first game 11 -3, the other team getting the ref kicked out for not understanding the strike zone, then inviting us to do jello shots with them. With over an hour to kill before our on slot of afternoon games, we got beer at the store, ate, and watched the actual serious kickball championships, amazed at how the games basically boiled down to the speed and abilities of the pitcher, catcher and shortstop.

2:30pm found the weather at a barely tolerable temperature, and us playing a team from Phoenix. They were good and we were a little shaken up initially, but we pulled through, Martin managing to bring in the tying run. We then all sat in a 12 foot amoeba of shade, watching a Prius hit a truck directly in front of it as two teams, one dressed as state pageants, the other as pink tacos, played each other. We beat the Bad News Bears and were starting to feel loopy from the beer and the relentless sun and the lack of food and the continuous kickball. Our final game was against a team who had qualified for the real championships. They were really good and it didn't help that our ref was drunk, even stopping play to take a knee and chug when he got "iced" by the other team. We ended up losing on some bullshit rule about ball deflection off a player only being grounds for one base advancement, even if it was intentional. Defeated, tired and sore, we left, trying to get into party mode for the night, even though our bodies were exhausted and the lure of free libations and debauchery wasn't enough to make sleep sound completely blasphemous.

After managing to shower and dress ourselves in club appropriate attire, we ate and took off for the free kickball after-after party at Lavo, some club run by the Tao group. It was as to be expected--cool enough decor, offensively priced cocktails, bottle girls in minimal clothing, flashing lights, loud top 40 music, etc. The boys started dropping like flies, not willing to shell out enough money on drinks that would enable them to tolerate pretending to enjoy dancing. By 1:15am, I felt like an old cripple, my foot and knee having a contentious civil war with the rest of my body. We left the club, ears ringing, heads pounding.


As it was our last night in Vegas, and me and Brittany's first time, we tried to see what else was going on. We met up with some of the guys at Bill's again, but were not in the mood to for another epic night of craps. We hit up the penny slots, I balling out by playing a entire $1, but Britt was losing and some 21 year old was trying to chat us up, so we left. That's how I wound up back in the hotel and asleep by 2:30am, too wiped out from all-day kickball and clubbing on 2 hours of sleep from the night before to be ashamed of my non-existent Vegas sea-legs.

Everyone else left at THE ass crack of dawn on Sunday. Martin and I didn't leave until that evening, so we took our sweet time packing up, then checked out and went in search of brunch. We were determined to eat our $25 worth of the buffet, but as we were full after plate one, even spite couldn't help us polish off more than 2 plates apiece. We were amused by the number of wedding parties we saw. Let it be known to all that I will NEVER get married in Vegas or Disneyland. Period. We decided to leave the stale, depressing air of the casino, fueled by the broken dreams of washed up strippers and club promoters turned double-chinned card dealers and the sad, chain-smoking, aesthetically, financially, mentally, physically fucked masses of middle America gambling away their life savings, to go get some sunshine!

The strip was not much better, as I limped along annoyed by being among the throngs of tourists, Martin grumbling when I insisted on taking the escalators instead of hobbling up the stairs to appease his imagined sense of pride. We walked into the mall of the Wynn Encore and were assaulted by unnecessarily expensive brand names. We role played that I was a spoiled, young gold-digger and he was my sugar daddy, which consisted of me pouting at every window containing a gaudy, high profile item until he conceded and agreed to buy me two of everything. (He was eerily adept at handling such senseless vapidity, negotiating and placating like a pro. Me thinks he's had quite a bit of practice in dealing with barely-legal, brain-dead girls....)

We couldn't take the heat anymore and returned to the hotel where we saw two lackluster lions lying in their display, undoubtedly artificially docile from high doses of tranquilizers. Luckily, we ran into Jen who was on her way to the airport with Hanley, so we jumped at the chance to leave. Martin was kind enough to drag my bag though the airport, so I introduced him to the 21st century and showed him how be environmentally correct by using only his phone to check in. Still unable to stomach alcohol, we just sat down outside of a sports bar and chatted for a while, he impishly contaminating my water by plopping candy into it. We continued our Dave Chappelle style hate by judging all the people walking by, deciding the middle aged women trying to "live it up" in Vegas were the saddest, because no one wanted them (save shows like the Chippendale's and The Thunder from Down Under which surely rely HEAVILY on their patronage...). We were on the same flight, but the gods were cruel, upgrading his seat to a bulkhead while me and my mutinying joints were relegated to the cramped back of the plane.

Upon arriving back home, I was not sure I have any desire to return to Vegas again, save making it to the real kickball championships or strictly for business. I was even a little sad to realize how old I am and how unappealing the idea of clubbing and being hungover ALL WEEKEND LONG is, but also glad that I am past the age where that is a life goal. All said and done, I did enjoy myself and the people I went with, which, in the end, is all that matters :)

Fail

Sooo, I started this blog because this kid was aspiring to a conquer a list of 101 goals in 1001 days, inspired to an extent by his man-crush Ernest Hemingway. Then he QUIT. I hung in for a little while, more out of a defiant will to beat him than an actual desire to accomplish a complete list, and now I am officially resigning.


I'm converting this blog more into a spotty and incomplete journal that chronicles the glorious triumphs and unfortunate follies of my traipse through life. Though as I sit here with a club foot, in a plastic/velcro back harness, reflecting on how a guy asked for my number to hang out because we were both cripples on crutches, how a a mentally disabled man-child in a wheelchair grinned at me shyly and excitedly when he saw the breast plate of my brace, how little children follow me around the store loudly whispering to their mothers "what happened to her?", I realize that the content will likely contain a disproportionate amount of folly.

Attend a live jazz performance

Perhaps my favorite yearly event in San Francisco is the Fillmore Jazz Festival. Fillmore street is roped off, temporarily transformed into open jazz stages where you can promenade the sidewalks, eating, drinking, looking at the vendor wares, people watching and, of course, listening to FREE live jazz. When you tire of ambulating, you simply take a seat in the middle of the street and let your ears be rhapsodized by the vibrant sounds emanating from the stage before you. This year I went with a bunch of kids from law school. I had a pretty good spam sandwich, a sample of tequila ice cream, and browsed some ridiculously priced art, slowly strolling up and down the festival. The music wasn't as great as in years past, but the ambiance and company were worthy compensations. And that was pretty much the end of the disciplined and graceful part...

*******GRAPHIC PICTURES, NOT FOR FAINT OF HEART******

I have been indulging too much in the joie de vivre part of things this summer, not having bothered finding a job, pretty much spending the days hiking or hanging out with my mom. As all good things must come to an end, after the music was over, we stopped at a park and a giant tree became my kryptonite. Being headstrong and determined to triumph in competitions were there really are no winners, I climbed up the tree with reckless abandon. The other two participants, in tune with their substance intake, preceded much more cautiously. I made it about 20 feet when I made the mistake of looking up while stepping down onto a branch that had no intention of aiding my ascent. Consequently, I went from first place to last in record time, crashing to the ground. The pressure from "landing" on my foot caused it to split open and I punished my back like it stole something. Leave it to me to break my first bones at 26. Falling out of a tree. At a JAZZ festival.





I landed myself in the hospital at SF General for a week. (NEVER make the mistake of getting involved in a trauma on a holiday weekend! You must contend with gun shot wounds and crackheads who try to smoke rock in their trachea airway-holes, all of whom take precedent over your tree fall. All the real doctors are gone, likely swimming with the dolphins in Greece and drinking mimosas, while you are left to the questionable ability and mercy of their fill-ins. The fill-ins often act PARALYZED and are loathe to make any decisions without someone more senor's approval.) I was roomed with a 21 year old who'd been to jail, has a 6 year old, and lost most of her fingers being pushed through a window by a jealous ex-boyfriend on account of something he saw on her Facebook. From 6am to 3am, she watched all kinds of quality tv programs such as Murray, all manner of court tv shows, Jesus sermons, Cops, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, etc., stayed on the phone at least 10 hours a day, and her pain level was always at a 9 or 10. She was also missing a front tooth.

One day the nurse "accidentally" dressed me in a gown for the morbidly obese. As I lay there on my back, uncleared to do anything else save eat from a tub of Red Vines my friends had brought and listen to the cacophony of my neighbor screaming at her son on the phone while awaiting the paternity results for the misguided souls on the Murray show, I felt I had a better understanding of rock bottom. Luckily, the ball got rolling the next day and I was fitted for the snazzy little plastic and velcro back harness that will accessorize my boot for the next 6-8 weeks.



SEXY. (Adding insult the injury, the specs the guy took when measuring the contraption included designating my breast size as an A-.) And here's what my foot looks like now:



SUPER SEXY!! My lovely mother now calls me Scar Baby. Not sure what the moral of this story is, other than who falls out of trees at 26??? I mean really.

Meet with 1L Professors

In college, I always regretted not getting to know my professors better. (Not gonna lie that this is primarily because a better relationship with them = a better recommendation...) In law school, I decided to try and bite the bullet and go see them. They pee and poo too, so there is no reason for me to fear them, right? This turned out to actually be true. Our Criminal Law professor was probably the most intimidating in class, but much less sweat and fear inducing in person. I had lunch with our Contracts professor and learned all kinds of interesting tidbits, including about some kid who thought an appropriate graduation speech topic would be about how he almost got arrest for being a pedophile. (Apparently, his DAUGHTER walked in on him in the bathroom one day and wanted to help him hold his penis and he OBLIGED!!! Naturally, when the girl went to a sleepover at a friend's house and tried to help that dad out, ALARM BELLS went off and set into motion quite the fiasco. Graduation speech material???! I mean, really.)

The only professor I didn't go see in person was Criminal Procedure, but that class was INSUFFERABLE. I set in the back between two people who eventually dropped out and another kid whose ADHD was the reason Adderol was invented--clear recipe for fail. She essentially spent 2 hours squawking and mumbling about flashbacks from 40 years ago when she was a spring chicken. Me and ADHD kid would tune out immediately, playing games like tic-tac-toe, name all the state capitals and postal abbreviations, scribbling mean comments about other classmates on each others "notes," etc. Needless to say, I saw no point to enduring office hours, especially since she'd probably say "Oh, you're one of the people in the back row who is NEVER paying attention." And heaven forbid she launch into another rambling tale of her "rebel" good old days...