Happy Mother's Day, I hope everyone has a great one.
Mine is going to be spent in the library. I'm about to fall off the edge of the earth, and I won't return until the Economonster is done. I will try to check email at least once a day, but it's going to be pretty grim. I committed to having it done by Tuesday evening, and even if I do nothing but write straight through that's going to be tough to pull off.
But pull it off I must, so here goes.
Ciao!
Edit.
Election.
Headache from hell.
Prom preparation.
More edit. More Economonster.
Rinse and repeat.
TFL and I just got back from seeing a production of Don Giovanni. The sight of Donna Elvira in dominatrix costume was a little jarring, but the production was decent overall.
A couple of really wonderful voices, and the rest solid enough that you weren't waiting for the next cringe-inducing moment.
Mozart is always wonderful, is he not?
Above the Law, that source of all real news in the legal world, had a link to an op-ed in the Washington Post. Written by a 1L at Yale, it describes the overachieving but not very nice people with whom she goes to school. And I thought to myself, huh.
That has not been my experience. I go to school with people who are that overachieving, amazing, inspiring. They are also nice. They not only send notes, they often do so without being asked. They'll not only lend textbooks, they'll sit down and explain tricky concepts, or critique your paper, or moot you. They'll support you when your life goes down the toilet and celebrate with you when you triumph.
And they're nice in the little ways that can make a difference--the nod in the hall, the offer of a lift, the compliment on your haircut. True, some of them have no manners at all in the library, but most of them are relentlessly polite and often truly kind. By and large, I think I go to school with very good people. It's not a regional thing either, because this is a national school.
But it's an interesting point, that often those overachieving type A++ people are not always kind to their neighbor. It reminds me of my all-time favorite quote from a movie:
My mother once said to me, "Elwood" -- she always called me Elwood -- "Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." For years I tried smart. I recommend pleasant.
Dogness thinks she's a rottweiler. Every time the doorbell rings, she goes into full alert mode and is phenomenally loud. Finally, I snapped and ordered a training collar--one that sprays a citronella mist instead of giving a shock. It's organic, harmless, works by distraction instead of pain. I had to give it a try.
It arrived today--in a storm of hideous barking, once again waking me up. (Yes, the dinner last night was all kinds of fun.) The first thing I did once I was coherent enough to open the box was to assemble and attach the collar. I was going to be home for a while, and several deliveries were due.
Well. The first time she started barking, she sort of choked it off, restarted, stopped again, looked confused. As soon as she shushed, I expressed my sincere admiration of her quiet with gushing compliments and a treat. The next time the bell rang, there were a couple of bark attempts, and renewed quiet. Bliss! I again shared my enthusiastic appreciation with Dogness.
The last time the bell rang, there was one rather soft bark and that was it. Hurrah!!
Also, we have run out of dog poop bags. I'm thrilled with the demise of the plastic bag, and the uptick in the use of canvas or other reusable bags, but cleaning up after Dogness must be done. So I was very happy to learn about these bags, but I have to find a cheaper source. Ow.
I have an outline for the Economonster! I woke up this morning and there was the outline, floating around in my brain. I scribbled it down before I could forget it, did a little fleshing out later, and sent it off the Professor I-Will-Have-Your-Head.
He wrote back with some encouragement and advice, and said things like "risk neutral profit-maximizers who aren’t subject to the sunk-cost fallacy."
Uh huh.
Oh boy, do I have a lot of work to do. But first, I must head off to the LR banquet. Should be fun.
I got a call from Boy yesterday. He was grocery shopping. He needed to know the ingredients for pasta sauce. There's something about getting a phone call like that that really drives home the reality of having grown children.
It's surreal.
I never felt unduly young when they were growing up, but now I think there's just no way I could be old enough to have not one but two adult children.
In other news: the first set of bar exam books arrived today. Egad.
We've been--ever so gradually--getting the flat ready to sell. And yes, we need to get it on the market some time last month. Let's not discuss that. Anyway, one of the last major(ish) projects was to do a mini renovation of the front bathroom. Ditch the old sink and medicine cabinet (beyond hideous) and put in a nice white (cheap) porcelain pedestal sink, a smaller white medicine cabinet that would be (brace yourselves for craziness) low enough for the women in the house to see themselves in it. We're going for a radical change with that one.
A few weeks ago TFL and I trudged to the Home Despot to get the stuff. He called his friend with the contractor guys, and after the usual number of false starts got a firm date--tomorrow.
Naturally, 5 minutes after TFL left this morning and while I was still in a coma violently resisting the notion of getting up with only 4 hours of sleep because of course I didn't go to bed as early as planned last night the doorbell rang.
What the...?
I threw on a robe, too sleepy to curse, and opened the door a crack. Yep, the contractor guys. Uh?
The guy didn't call you?
Uh? One sec? I closed the door again, threw on I don't know what kind of clothes, and let them in before they vanished. So we weren't ready for them, so the place was a disastrous pit, so what--never ever turn away the contractor guys. I stumbled around, showing them where the bathroom was and the supplies (which they could hardly miss, as they were stacked up in the front hall). A few minutes later TFL walked back in--the guy had called. Nice timing.
I left the contractors in TFL's competent hands and skedaddled, and when I got home I had a new bathroom! Yay! Now only 3,999 more things to do. But first I have to recover from being woken up that way.
I've spent most of my waking hours this weekend buried in research for my paper, which I think I might start calling the Economonster. Yes. And it has been as thrilling as you might imagine, but perhaps not as productive as I would have liked.
Because of course I would have liked to somehow have finished everything this weekend.
I did take a few minutes off to make evil saltines when TFL got home from work. (Yes, on a Sunday. Yes, he's looking forward to retirement.) They are rather disgustingly evil, if I do say so myself.
Sadly, even after eating way more of them than I should, I'm still cranky. I've been staring at the computer all the live-long day and I'm behind in my classes and freaking out about Habeas and I don't want to do anything but go play. But instead I'll work on the Economonster for another half an hour or so, get my gym bag ready for the morning, and try to get more than 5 hours of sleep tonight.
You may recall my recent disastrous meeting with the advisor for my econ paper.
I did what any half-way smart person would do: I called my really smart friends. In fact, I bribed two of the biggest econ experts I know with beer (Beamish stout, quite drinkable given that the Pub was out of Guinness) and fried foods. In return, they would listen to me ramble on about the things I was thinking about in relation to bankruptcy and hedge funds and the like, and help me come up with a hook. Being friends of mine, they were quite susceptible to being bribed and were incredibly patient and pheonmenally helpful. And between the three of us, we came up with a hook.
Something it appears no one had yet started writing about. Which, of course, could mean either we were brilliant and creative, or it was such a bad idea no one had bothered.
After doing some more research and putting the idea for my topic down on paper, I went to a different professor to run it by him. If it passed the laugh test, I would proceed. If not, well, I knew where to get more beer.
But it passed, just. So I went back and did a little more tweaking and refining, threw in a little more economics jargon. Finally I gathered the scraps of my courage and went back to my advisor and, not trusting myself to ad lib it, read him my proposal. (I can't think of a more uncharacteristic action on my part, which goes to show how bizarre it is that I'm writing an econ paper.)
Anyway, out of the corner of my eye I could see him nodding and--I looked up--he was smiling. And he kept nodding and smiling as I was reading, and then he said it was a great topic. Turns out, he thought so because it was exactly the topic he was currently working on.
Well, what do you know.
I think he warned me in case I was planning to publish. But I wasn't, particularly. Mainly I want to get credit and not have to return the money. Because that would be crappy.
So I have a topic, and my advisor is enthusiastic, and I'm going to be working my behind right off to get this thing done.
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