And Then the Zombies Came Into the Store and Cornered Me Because They Thought I Was Their Queen

You know what's the good thing about having a boyfriend? You have someone to tell your dreams to. And I don't mean all those stars and flowers, someday-type hopes and dreams. I'm talking about your actual, middle of the night, maybe I am just a little bit crazy for realsies dreams. The next day you have someone to tell them to. And he has to listen. Because he's your boyfriend and that's part of the job description.

He usually does a good job of listening to my crazy ramblings. Or at least pretending to listen. So that's a plus.

Let's Ask the Internets

Is it wise to embark on a 1,000 mile road trip with your boyfriend?

Maybe.

Will one of the two of you wind up stranded on the side of I-95 somewhere in rural South Carolina?

Quite possibly.

We're trying to get to Florida and have found cheap enough plane tickets, but the rental car is turning out to be very, very expensive. We've checked Kayak, Orbitz, carrentals.com and I even checked out whether my AAA membership would get me a good enough discount. The cheapest so far is $237 for a week. Does that seem a bit much to anyone else?

????

What do you do when you keep checking the job boards and there is literally nothing to apply for? A friend of mine told me when she was looking for a job, she had a goal of getting out 5 resumes a week. Well, I would like to do that, if I could find 5 jobs a week to apply to. Everyone wants experience. I know that if there was something in my field where they wanted a couple of years of experience, I could finagle my law school and scanty post-law school experience into a good cover letter (like the job I interviewed for last Fall). But there really isn't anything. So I just keep checking the boards and emailing the attorneys I know (hoping I'm not just annoying them at this point) and feeling kind of powerless about it all.

I'm lucky because thankfully I do have work right now, even if it is mindless. In reality, though, this case could settle any day and the 40 of us who are here would be back out on the streets. That's kind of unsettling.

I'm trying to be philosophical about it and hope that someday the right job will come along.

Brrr

What could be better than a puffy pink coat?



Why a puffy pink coat with a hood, of course!



It was 2 degrees when I left for work yesterday morning. -14 with the wind chill. I'm hardcore yo.

FYI

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd
be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Ahhh, That's Better

The old posts and the old links are still up, but I'm ready for something different. Something fresher and lighter. It's time.

I changed the name because I've decided that my blog title was weighing me down as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any title that includes the words "Often Overwhelming Life" is going to come off as a little stressed out. And while I may feel that way a lot of the time, and know that I really have no control over many aspects of my life right now, I can still seek for some sort of inner balance.

Several months ago I bought a small river rock with the word "Peace" inscribed on it. When I cleaned my desk off a few weeks ago I came across it and remembered how I bought it as a reminder. A reminder to calm down. A reminder to step back. A reminder to just breathe.

Drive-In

Do you remember the drive-in? I don't think there was anywhere else you could go for such little money and have the experience of a double feature, while sitting in the relative comfort of your car. Movies have always been very big in my family (as have inexpensive outings) so going to the drive-in was an exciting event.

We would load up the backseat of the car with me, sometimes one of my friends, blankets, pillows, and snacks and head to the DeAnza drive-in. Usually my friend and I would start out on a blanket in the parking space next to our car so that we could see better, but we would gradually find our way back into the backseat and be asleep by the end of the second movie.

My favorite Disney movie is Sleeping Beauty, partly because of the way the Evil Maleficent and her accompanying music by Tchaikovsky still gives me chills, partly because of how cute Prince Philip is, even if he is a cartoon. One of the main reasons is because I remember being four or five and thrilled with the animation and the music and Maleficent while perched in the open window of our Ford LTD, resting my arms and head on the roof of the car, with my dad's arm securely clamped around my back so that I didn't fall.

I remember seeing my tough grandpa with the closet full of guns and the camp in the Everglades, get choked up over the closing scenes of Beaches. I had seen the movie a few weeks earlier with my best friend and my friend's big sister and her best friend and my friend's mom and her best friend, all six of us weeping copiously at the end, so I knew what was coming. Of course, Papaw played it off, but I knew the truth.

I remember watching the end of Fatal Attraction out of the rear window of the car, eyes and mouth wide open as Glenn Close just would. Not. Die. Not that my parents would have ever taken me to see Fatal Attraction, it just happened to be on the screen behind our car. I saw several other movies I wasn't supposed to see in that manner. Soundlessly, so they lost some of their impact, but it was sort of like having Cinemax unscrambled sometimes.

I had my first taste of sushi at the drive-in. My parents had recently discovered a pan-Asian take-out place and my mom had started eating California Rolls on a regular basis. One night, peering through the two front seats at the roll, I asked if I could try one. Now that I've had real sushi, I'm sure I would find it disgusting, but at the time, it was the most amazing thing I had ever tasted.

Happily, the DeAnza drive-in is still open. If you're in Tucson, go. Tonight.

Oh the Pain of Fashion

On MLK day I celebrated by having lunch and a good gabfest at The Cheesecake Factory with two friends. Both of these women are amazing people with great insights and if you're Mormon in Cambridge and don't know them, well, a) you've probably been living under a rock, and b) get to know them right away. It will make your life more fun, if nothing else.

Afterwards we did a little shopping. Sometimes when I go to the mall I feel like everything is icky. The clothes hang poorly and/or are made of low quality (ie see-through) fabric and/or come in ugly colors and/or are just stupid-looking. That was the kind of shopping experience I had that day. Then I walked into Banana Republic to meet up with my friends and saw this adorable dress

on the mannequin, with this shrug

on top. So I went and found both pieces in my size to try on.

The mannequin wearing the cutest outfit in the store is such a good marketing ploy. So good in fact that when I went and found my friends and joined them in their dressing room (big enough for 3! Go Banana Republic!), I discovered that Peggy had the outfit too and Mary was currently wearing it. I didn't see it on Peggy, but I will say that you know you've found a good dress when it looks cute on both the size 2 girl and the size 14 girl (except the chest was a little large (which is really a shocker since Banana usually designs for A cups and neither Mary nor I are particulary lacking in the chestular region so I don't know who they thought was going to be wearing that dress exactly) and the skirt flowy so I'm going to say I probably could have worn a 12).

However, upon checking the price tags, I was reminded why I hate Banana Republic and never shop there. $200. For one outfit. Um, no.

But it was so, SO cute.

Weather Report

I realize that everyone in the world is going to think I'm insane when I tell you that I had a little thrill this morning upon waking up to discover per The Weather Channel that it was 7 degrees outside (-4 with the wind chill). See, one of the things I like about New England is the actual changing of the seasons. After living in a desert where the seasons were hot and not-so-hot (with a couple of nights in the teens in January just to keep us on our toes) for 17 years, I am so over the whole no seasons thing. I love all of their seasons in their places and have been a little miffed by the whole no winter thing that's been going on thus far in Boston.

Don't get me wrong. If it were 7 degrees every day I would not be a happy girl. But one day in a week that promises temperatures in the 30's and 40's for the rest of the week is fine.

Plus, today I got to wear my cute puffy pink coat, which was locked up in storage last winter in DC because it never got cold enough. I love my puffy pink coat. It's sassy. And you know I'm all about the sassy.

Of course it puts the kibosh on walking home from work tonight. I did that last night and with the temperature rapidly dropping, my cheeks, which were the only exposed part of my body, almost fell off during the last half mile. They were flaming red and hot to the touch once I got inside. So I don't think I'll be walking home tonight.

Ring A Ding Ding

I realize I'm probably opening up a can of worms here, but has anyone heard buzz, good or bad, on the LG Chocolate phone line? I am all aflutter about the Cherry Chocolate:

Oooo, pretty!

It plays music too, which is handy, especially since my iPod died a few months ago. I know, I need to take it to the Apple store, and my techy boyfriend tells me he thinks the hard drive is dead, which is apparently not that difficult to fix, but in the meantime having a phone that also plays music would make me happy. I would be like those people in the commercials moving my head from side to side to Nelly Furtado and Timbaland.

Plus, since I'm a Verizon customer already, I have money toward a new phone coming to me and if I order it online I get a discount, which makes the phone free. And I already have a Bluetooth headset that I got for super cheap at a Black Friday sale (and which doesn't work with my current antiquated phone). I just need to buy the music pack for $30 and maybe a car charger since that's always handy to have and I'm all set with my sassy new phone.

Of course what I would really like is to be rich and be able to buy the iPhone, but I'll just have to admire from afar until they get down to a reasonable price.

As a bonus question, does anyone have a good site for downloading music? Preferably legal. iTunes is expensive and puts too many restrictions on the songs - ie each song can only be copied something like 6 times. I have a great site, but because of legal machinations it will probably be shutting down within the next few months. Any suggestions?

City Living

Just in case there was any doubt, the crazies, they LOVE me.

After the interminable mandatory DC Bar CLE class ended on Tuesday afternoon I had a couple of hours to kill before meeting a friend at the Kennedy Center to see Orrin Star.* I had gone for a little walk on my lunch hour and noticed a Barnes and Noble down the street.** So once we were released, I mosied over to the bookstore.

I picked up a few books*** and planted myself at a coffee shop table to decide which ones I was going to buy because you know what an English and History major with a law degree always needs is MORE books. I placed the big DC Bar binder from the class on the table and started perusing the books. About 10 minutes later a nicely-dressed man with a brown fedora sat down at the table next to me. We made eye contact and politely nodded at one another. I noticed he had a law textbook.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him take in the DC Bar binder and then he said, "Excuse me, are you an attorney?" I replied yes.

Then he started talking about how he's a law professor and he's involved with this really big case and Oprah is going to get indicted and how it's going to be this big deal. He just spewed forth with information. As he was talking, I wondered why he was telling me all of these details since, you know, aren't client matters supposed to be confidential. Then he said, "We just filed this in court today." Oh, ok, so it's public record now I suppose. But then he kept going on and on. And on. After awhile I smiled politely and said, "Well, I'll have to keep my eye out for that."

Then he asked what law school I went to and when I told him it was in Boston he started talking about how he had interviewed the man who was driving JFK the day he got shot. He got really excited and mumbled some stuff about JFK, then JFK, Jr. and said loud enough for me to make out, "You know, the same people killed them." I must have looked skeptical because he followed that up with, "Didn't you ever think of that?" with a smile on his face and a tone in his voice as if I was a fool to have never thought of that possibility. I said, "Um, no, I never really thought much about the Kennedys actually." He said, "Well, it's true."

I suppose he had imparted enough wisdom to me at that point because he smiled and said, "Well, good luck to you," which I thanked him for. He opened his [Intellectual Property] textbook and proceeded to read cases, taking copious notes on an accompanying legal pad.

So maybe he was legit, and maybe he wasn't crazy, but I'm thinking not, despite the tie and the brown fedora.

* I had no idea the Kennedy Center does free 6 PM concerts EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. How cool is that? Orrin Star put on a good show. Just 2 guys singing with mandolins, guitars and a banjo. Bluegrass mostly with some Irish and Creole music thrown in for good measure. During the concert he mentioned that he had lived in Boston for a long time right near where I live. Small world.

**Yes, I know, Laura Llew, evil corporate bookstore. But it’s the best I could do in downtown DC. I promise there is a great independent bookstore in Cambridge that I heart profusely.

*** Including You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation by Deborah Tannen, which after finishing 100 pages in a day and a half, I recommended to all of my friends. Fascinating.

Swearing

I'm in DC for a couple of days and just got sworn into the DC Bar. Due to issues with addresses and forwarding and such I missed the deadline for the Mass Bar swearing in and missed out on the whole ceremony. The DC one was only a half hour or so, but it felt neat to be standing there with a bunch of other attorneys, all of us looking spiffy in our suits, swearing to uphold the laws and the Constitution and such in front of the Court of Appeals.

I'm staying with one friend and am going out with a couple others tonight. I have moved around a lot and each time I leave friends behind - or they leave me and move before I do. The upside is, I usually have a place to stay in various and sundry locales. The downside is, I'll never have all my friends over the years over to my house for a party on a random Saturday. I think they all just need to move to wherever I am.

Walking around DC in my short suit skirt and heels helped me remember how very, very popular I am with a certain segment of the male population in downtown DC. I got a lot of comments on my legs today, which I just kind of think of as these big things that are too big for the cute boots I really want to wear. I swear I think one guy wanted to take a bite out of my calves, if the tone of his voice was anything to go by.

I chatted with a couple of other people who weren't skeevy during the course of the day, one of whom held the apartment building door open for me because he saw me struggling up the hill with my suitcase. My friend who I'm staying with chalks that up to my having a friendly face and tells me it happens to her mom all the time. It always happened in Chicago when I lived there and it happens in DC, but it never happens in Boston. Well, except for the cute 20-something guy who started chatting with me one day, only to tell me after about 5 minutes of conversation that he was paranoid schizophrenic, and he thought he should tell his friend Rachel that he thought she was too. Um...k.

Regret

How do you get past regret? They say you should never look back. They say hindsight is always 20/20. But how do I move forward? How do I stop thinking "What if..." and "If only..." and "I wish I had never..."? I don't know and it's weighing me down. Heavily.

New Year

It's that time of year. I really only have 2 resolutions:

1) Get on the ball with the job search. I have excuses aplenty, most notably the fact that the end of the year is a crappy time to look for a job. However, it's a new year. The dawn of a new day. I can't continue to be Scarlett O'Hara, all "I'll think about that tomorrow" and such. Tomorrow has come. I have started today with emailing a contact and actually reading my job board emails. That's progress.

2) Freaking lose some weight. I weighed myself this morning and almost started crying. It's ALL back. Well, not all, I guess. Not ALL the weight I lost since I moved from Chicago, but it's a chunk that I hoped to never see again registered in numbers on a scale at my feet. I knew that the New Year was going to be the start of something big again so I kind of let myself go nuts during the holiday season. Like my forefathers (and mothers) I have food issues. I love food, I love to cook, I love trying new things and savoring flavors and the fabulousness of food. It's ingrained within me and I have to control the urge to try everything and a lot of it all the time.

The plan thus far:

a) Portion control. I know what's good to eat and how much of it to eat. It does involve some prep time so I'm going to need to be more rigid and make sure I do make the time.

b) No sugar. I just have no self control and I know it. I tell myself I'll let myself just have treats sensibly, but that never works. Instead I try a little bit of everything. And then a little bit more because it was just so darn yummy. One day a month and that's it. When I did this before I found that my splurge day cravings became less and less. Instead of having a pint of Ben & Jerry's and a couple of Mounds Bars, by the 4th or 5th month I was putting half the pint back in the freezer to save for the following month's splurge day and feeling a little nauseated at the thought of any more sugar. (Speaking of pints, my new favorite thing is Cold Stone Dark Chocolate Peppermint ice cream with Heath Bar and Oreos. So in case you were wondering a good present for me would be Cold Stone gift certificates for splurge day use.)

c) Exercise. It's key. I enjoy swimming at the local pool and am thankfully working flexible jobs right now so I can head to the pool during their very sparse lap swim hours. The holidays kind of mess with that flexibility since I have to make up lots of hours in a squashed amount of time. So instead of swimming tonight, I'm going to walk home from work. I brought my sneakers and everything.

That's it for the new year. And I am determined to carry these past January.