Licensed to Sue

So I got sworn in on Tuesday afternoon. I wore a suit and took my nice purse, so as to better feign employment. The clerk lady who ran the show tried to make it funny, which helped move it along. We all held up our right hands and swore to serve god and our country, to help people at all times (unless it's inconvenient), and to live by the girl scout law. My favorite part was the lady from the Board of Bar Examiners (boo! hiss!) was on crutches. I like to think that someone who failed took a crowbar to her ankle in the parking lot. In reality, she probably just twisted her ankle while she and her cohorts were gleefully stomping on people's dreams.

I got to talking to the girl next to me after some schmuck on the end of our row decided to introduce himself to everyone within earshot. She is also unemployed and wants to do estate planning. I gave her my card (the one I printed myself). I'm very, very good at networking with other unemployed people my own age. I suck very, very much at networking with anyone who is in a position to actually help me. /sigh/

On Saturday I have what I think may be the final step in my IRS non-lawyer job application process. It's some role-playing exercise where people call and pretend to have tax problems and I have to try to help them without swearing or what have you. I don't anticipate that being a big problem. That job would start sometime in January I guess.

Also, in keeping with one of my birthday resolutions, yesterday I applied to two jobs. They weren't law jobs though. They had more openings for my total dream non-law job (study abroad counsellor) at the study abroad office of a big university here. It only requires a BA and 1-3 years of higher education experience. I actually worked there for a year as a work-study student, so I think I might have a shot. I also emailed my former supervisor and gushed about how much I loved working there in the guise of asking for advice on filling out the application, in case that might help. The whole reason I went to law school in the first place was to get a fabulous job that would fly me to France three times a year, and this job would do that. I could also get my LLM part time for free, if I still cared to.

I've got to get the temp people to find me something for next week. I'm starting to scrape the bottom of my bank account and all my bills are due on the 1st :\

Official Swearing

It turns out I vastly underestimated my friend's memories (or their ability to set up little computer reminders.) I heard from the 3 people I would have expected to hear from, plus several semi-random people.

I almost did my first deal last night. I was so freaking close I had the paperwork all filled out, but then at the last minute it turned out the girl didn't have first month's rent on her. But it still cheered me up a little to think that someone might actually rent something from me someday.

I'm still going to call my temp agencies back today though. Ideally I'd want something long term & part time, or something full time that's under a week. I don't want to quit the real estate thing, I just need a little infusion of cash to cope with the fact that I spend uncontrollably from 11/1 - 1/1 every year. Stupid holiday spirit!

I'm getting sworn in this afternoon at 1. I've got to find the letter they sent sometime before then to see if I have to wear a suit or something. I guess I'm going to wear one anyway so I look employed if I run into anyone I know. I should really get some business cards printed. People keep asking for them. I can't imagine why.

Anyway, after I get sworn in, I get to drag Boyfriend around to pick me out a birthday/anniversary present (since he still hasn't managed to find anything for our anniversary at the beginning of the month). I wish I had a better idea of what I want. Besides, you know, a job and all, but I don't think they sell those at Saks. Maybe at Harrods though. I miss London.

Happy Birthday To Me

None of my friends will remember that it's my birthday, because none of them live here. So depressing. My family is very unlikely to call either. We're more email based. And Boyfriend didn't get me anything because shopping for me freaks him out, although we are going to pick something out together tomorrow. But going out and having somebody pay for things for you makes you feel different than just receiving a preselected present.

Boyfriend's birthday was yesterday, and he has never moved more than 5 miles in his entire life, so all his friends and family are right here, so they all remembered and they all called.

Now I would like to take a moment and selfishly bitch about how going out to celebrate last night turned into this total disaster.

So B's mother has been wanting to see Borat for a long time. We tried to go see it for her birthday about two weeks ago, but she didn't get tickets in advance, and she had decided we should go to, like, the smallest theatre on earth to begin with, so it was sold out for basically the entire night when we got there.

Now B is not very picky about how he spends his free time, so he readily agreed to go see Borat last night, but I thought it was pretty obnoxious that she foisted her movie on him when it's his birthday and what he actually wanted to see was The Departed. I must point out though that he didn't ever bring that up, since he knew she wanted to see her movie and she was paying. So we'll let that slide.

Anyway, she called at 10am to confirm and said that the movie was at about 5:15 and we would go to dinner after. That sounded fine. We went to work on the house all day. We were on our way home at 4 to shower quickly (since we were covered COVERED in plaster dust) when his mother called back to say that the movie was actually at 4:50. Getting to that movie would have necessitated going covered in plaster dust. It seemed odd to both of us that you would give someone less than an hour's notice about an almost half hour change in time. But whatever, we rescheduled a little and decided to go to dinner first at 6 and then to a 7pm movie.

We got home, showered, and found a voicemail at 5:30 as we were leaving from his mother saying that the restaurant was closed. Rather than calling to make a reservation, she just showed up at the restaurant half an hour early. Since we were pressed for time, she said, we would just eat at the next closest open place. Fortunately, that wasn't a McDonalds, or a college dorm cafeteria, or whatever, but still, it just seemed like such poor planning to drag someone out on their birthday, make no firm plans whatsoever, and then keep calling to change things at the very last minute.

So the NEW new plan was to go to the sushi place across the street. This would normally be fine, because I like sushi, except that there are two MUCH better sushi places about two blocks up the street. As we got in the car, I asked B to call his mother and tell her that we would just meet them at one of those places instead, since it doesn't make sense to eat at some random place when there are good places about two inches away. But apparently his mother, like my mother, in some ongoing fit of anti-technology, operates a cell phone by turning it on, placing a call, and then turning it back off. So we had no way to get ahold of her and we just went to the crappy new restaurant.

Now here's the part that actually bothered me a lot. We walked in at precisely 6 - the appointed hour - and his mother and two brothers were sitting there chowing down already. I mean hello, that would be shockingly rude on any occasion, but my semi-Southern inner belle fainted dead away on finding that they would do that to someone on their birthday. And it's not like we were late - they were early, by (poorly made) choice.

It turned out that they had ordered a bunch of stuff "for the table." His mother always wants to do that and I totally hate it. She is itty bitty, so she just likes to pick a little at everyone's stuff, which I suppose is fine, but I tend to like to order something I want and then eat it. We're always ending up getting a bunch of appetizers and then each having one bite, which is totally not enough for anyone but her. Plus, I don't eat meat, and everyone else always wants meaty meat with blood sauce, so it ends up that I get like one bite out of the whole thing and I feel like I'm being greedy if I try to take a second bite of the one thing I can eat. And no one ever says anything when she suggests it, and I'm always the only one who's not family, so I don't think I should be complaining.

Anyway, there was an icy cold bowl of semi-eaten miso soup for us to share as an appetizer. Then a sashimi boat arrived. That's when I realized that they had actually ordered the entire meal before we got there - not just some appetizers to tide them over. I obviously don't eat sashimi, and neither does B normally, since that's just not what he likes. So we both ordered some stuff that we actually wanted, which made us both feel bad cause obviously it was getting really expensive at that point. I would like to put the blame for the boat squarely on B's totally selfish older brother, because he is the only one at the table that touched the sashimi, so it was clearly his idea.

Since we ordered about half an hour after they did, our stuff took forever to come out, so it was like two entirely separate meals. Although it was nice that everyone else was already full so no one tried to steal my food. As we were finishing, his mother looked at her watch and was like "oh, the movie is starting." We were like wait, you mean we need to get the check and leave right now? But no, she meant that the movie was actually, literally starting, because the 7 o'clock movie turned out to be at 6:45. Argh!! So we crammed the last bits of our food down our throats and, chewing madly, ran down the street to the theatre. Where we then had to wait in line for tickets, because, despite the fact that we missed it just two brief weeks ago due to the ongoing wild popularity of the movie, we had apparently not learned our lesson.

Fortunately, we didn't miss anything cause of all the stupid previews & the movie turned out to be really funny. I haven't laughed that hard since Harold & Kumar. I think I may have actually screamed with laughter at the last Pamela Anderson thing. There was definitely some kind of shreiking coming from my immediate vicinity.

In closing, I would like to point out that Boyfriend's mother is a very nice lady, she's just a little flaky.

But all in all, I give the evening 4 argh!!!'s out of 5.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I had a successful time making dinner with Boyfriend's mother (with Boyfriend making a guest appearance as onion chopping errand boy). I made the Best Stuffing Ever with fresh sage, some kind of pepperidge farm cornbread stuffing crumbs, celery, onions, and gold raisins. Yum. Everybody loved my little pumpkin custards, although they ate them all, which means none left for me. Luckily I foresaw such an occurence and bought the ingredients to make more.

I wanted to go to bed at 8, but I'm posting ads for apartments instead to try to get some action this weekend. Hot, steamy, apartment-showing action =) I'm doing it tonight because tomorrow I have to get up at 6am to watch them plaster the upper two floors of my house. That should be about as fun as watching paint dry. White, plastery paint. But it will be very exciting when it's all done, because the inside of the house will look much more like the inside of a house and much less like some kind of burned out meth lab.

Hope you're all stuffed and sleepy like me!

Schadenfreude

Now, mind you, I'm expressing no opinion on this whatsoever, because we all know that the Bar Exam Gods could swoop down at any time with a letter to the effect of "Oopsy, the guy next to you passed, not you, our mistake, better luck next time, loser."

But, in that spirit, I just found out that the most wretched, horrible girl I know failed the California bar exam.

Just reporting the news. No commentary whatsoever, except, perhaps, that it does bring to mind the concept of karma.

That is all.

Why I'm Too Busy To Blog

Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Discovered that the city saw fit to tow my completely legally parked car.
2. Spent an hour on the phone dialing and redialing the Did You Tow My Car line, which has, apparently, only one surly woman answering all 9000 daily calls.
3. Cried for approximately 3 hours because I can't afford to pay $150 to get back my completely legally parked car.
4. Read Martha Stewart Living to attempt to cheer self up enough to go pick car up from evil bastards who will surely spend a toasty warm eternity in hell for preying off the weak and innocent.
5. Made paper snowflakes that did not turn out like Martha's.

Things I'm Doing Today:

1. Sitting in office not getting paid.
2. Receiving phone calls from people cancelling their appointments.
3. Calling crazy old Italian landlady to unschedule appointment to view apartment, which will take at least 15 minutes as I listen politely while she rants about how cats sit in windows and distend the screens, or similar.
4. Installing fiberglass insullation in the bathroom of the house we'll never finish.
5. Rubbing eyes, realizing only too late that I have rubbed eyes with fiberglass-covered hand.
6. Attempting to buy pumpkin pie filling and fresh herbs, even though I know they're probably already out of both.

Things I Will Do Tomorrow:

1. Sit in office not getting paid.
2. Pray for UPS man to timely deliver 8 ramekins, suitable for making custard.
3. Bake tiny individual pumpkin custards (I hate crust) in hopefully delivered ramekins with hopefully acquired pumpkin pie filling.
4. Attempt to make make pureed roasted butternut squashes with shallots and thyme from magazine recipe with out burning squash or self.
5. Attend boring, stuffy Thanksgiving dinner with family that is not mine.
(This being dinner #1, with Boyfriend's father's family, not to be confused with the actual Thanksgiving day festivities at Boyfriend's mother's house, which is what I'm cooking for.)

Please Don't Go To Law School!!!

I've been meaning to post about why no one should ever go to law school for a while, but it makes me so mad I haven't gotten around to it. But I left the gist of it as a comment, so if you're thinking of going to law school, please go read it. There will be 15 minutes of Q&A afterwards, as time allows.

Dances With Crazies

In an odd twist of fate, my first appointment was with the financial aid lady from my law school. She apparently quit right after graduation because they pay slightly less than nothing. I asked if she could sneak back in quick and cancel my loans, and she said she'd see what she could do. So fingers crossed. She didn't like any of the places I showed her, but we spent an enjoyable 2 hours gossiping about who drinks what at what time of day in the administration.

My appointment last night, which sounded promising yesterday on the phone, turned out to be with this total nutjob queeny transvestite who wants to spend less than $1000 on a studio, but insists on bringing her king sized bed. She also kept me and the maintenance guy with the keys waiting for half an hour in a slightly sketchy neighborhood. So now I'm close, intimate friends with Phil, the Rebar guy. I know that he lived in a shelter for a while, was a drug addict for a while, and then learned to do construction and turned his life around.

I've got to start weeding these people out over the phone somehow. I have this great listing for a 1 bed for $950 that my phone is ringing off the hook about, and it's NICE for a place that cheap - its got a good sized living room with a bay window, a small bedroom, a full sized modern bathroom (and yes we do have *many* bathrooms that are *not* modern), a kitchen with full sized appliances, and two big closets. Plus it's on the second floor, not in the freaking basement, and there's loads of free street parking. And you can walk to a really nice area in about ten minutes. If I found it, I would be all over it for that price, or even for like $1100.

And yet, inexplicably, people come in and are like hmm... I wanted something huge like where I'm living in a luxury condo now with my four roommates. And it's like um, hello, are you STUPID??? You're paying $5000 for that thing! What in gods name makes you think you're going to find it in miniature for $950???

I was thinking I might start taking them to a $1250 place that's a total hole first and being like DO YOU SEE??? DO YOU SEE HOW THIS IS A RAT-INFESTED SYRIAN PRISON AND IT IS STILL OUT OF YOUR MINISCULE PRICE RANGE????? And then take them to the nice place and be like AND DO YOU LIKE THIS NICE PLACE IN YOUR PRICE RANGE NOW??? DO YOU???? WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU LIKE IT!!!!

I have an appointment tonight with someone who said they could pay a much more reasonable $1250, so we'll see how that goes. Someone told me that on average about 1 in 4 showings turn into rentals, and this is number 4.

Show Me The Money!

I know it's been less than a week, but I spent all day yesterday staring into a bleak wasteland of a future where I slowly starved to death over a period of weeks, the silence broken only by the incessant ringing of my rich manager's cell phone as he scooped up all the potential tenants.

But then, in the darkness, a phone rang. MY phone! Someone finally called me about an apartment last night! Huzzah!!!

Unfortunately she wants to spend less than $1000/month, which means I'll be trying to convince her to rent one of 8 vacant cardboard boxes, 4 of which have probably rented since we last updated our listings, although some of them do include a shopping cart, which is a nice feature at that price. Our appointment is tomorrow, so I have about 36 hours to come up with some sort of strategy.

In other career news, I'm still in the running for one of those non-attorney IRS jobs. They've been reviewing our applications for two months now. I guess I'll find out by January, since that's when they're supposed to start. Those pay practically nothing, but I think the day shift ends at 3ish so maybe I could do the real estate thing part time. Even though I've heard that's basically impossible to do realistically. We shall see.

Last night I dreamed I was in my school's career services office sobbing and they were being totally mean to me. Although that could have just been a premonition. Or a repressed memory.

Deja Vu

I found a job posting this morning for my dream job - which, as you recall, I already interviewed for. This seems to happen to me a lot. I'm constantly applying for things that sound perfect, never hearing anything, then seeing the job reposted, which means "We already advertised this once, but only heard from total losers, so we're trying again, but for godssake, if you already applied, don't do it again, because you obviously s-u-c-k suck suck sucked!"

In this case it's a little different, because I'm sure they did hire someone the first time and now they're just looking to hire an additional person. But still. It would have been nice if they had at least sent me some kind of rejection letter, or postcard, or email first, considering I spent 3 hours of my life meeting with 4 separate people there on 2 different occasions. I mean, I get very polite rejection letters on nice stationary from totally random things I apply for all the time. They're like:

Dear Ms. Feithline, Thank you so much for applying to be the Manager of Guest Relations at the Loudon County Landfill. Despite your excellent qualifications, we have decided to go forward with another candidate. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors in the Landfill Hospitality Industry.

Sincerely,
John Lennon
Garbageman Extraordinaire

P.S. Enclosed is a free pass for the Historic Dump Tour, good for you and a guest. Enjoy!

But whatever. I'm applying again this morning. I only wish I'd somehow magically acquired some litigation experience in the meantime, since I'm sure that's what killed me before. How many times do you think you can apply to the same government job in a row before it becomes pathetic?

Licensed to Sell

Well I passed the test. It was actually pretty hard, in that there were a lot of things I hadn't ever heard of before and couldn't possibly know. Like "What does MA Title V regulate?" and I'm like umm... septic tanks? But apparently I'm an excellent guesser, so it's all good.

They're supposed to give you your card immediately after you pay, right at the test center - the very essence of convenience. But when they called me up to the desk, they noticed a Horrible Fatal Error - my street address said the equivalent of "alston" instead of "Allston." Oh the horror! Now, obviously, if you sent mail to me at that address (if that were in fact my address) it would get to me, no problem. But they said they couldn't they couldn't possibly give me my license with such a Gross Error on it. And, conveniently, they can't make small corrections like that on their big fancy computers - they would have to send my papers away to be corrected and it would take about two to three weeks!!

It took me FOUR hours of calling people and alternately crying, persuading, and screaming (and pacing up, down and around the Common scaring women and small children as I went) but they FINALLY decided I could have my card with the slightly wrong address on it.

And then - THEN! - when they printed the damn thing, it magically printed with the CORRECT address on it! Argh!!!

The lady was like "It's a miracle! Someone upstairs must really like you" and I was like "That's because I've been sacrificing goats in your lobby all afternoon" and she looked a little scared, like maybe I really had been. Heh. Maybe I did. I'm not telling.

So I start work this afternoon. Come onnnnnnnnnnn big commission!

Puke on a Plane!

I was supposed to be in Chicago this weekend for a wedding, so that is where the bulk of my celebrating took place. My roommate from college lives there too, so on Friday night, we went out with her and I got pleasantly buzzed and showed my letter from the Board of Bar Examiners to a bunch of disinterested hipsters in Wicker Park.

I still can't read my letter past the first paragraph. I know there's some stuff in there about getting sworn in, but I still get all excited and start shrieking and jumping up and down when I read the part about passing.

On Saturday night we went to the wedding, which had a glorious Open Bar and also a Simpsons theme which I thought was very cute. The drawback, of course, of an open bar, is found in the missing ending to one's night and the horrors of the following morning. I fear the bride and I may have been captured on camera doing... shall we say things... inappropriate things... Boyfriend, meanwhile, took a shine to the bride's mother and danced with her incessantly.

I'm hazy on the other details, but I know we went to bed at about 2am because that's when the hotel bar was supposed to close, and we had to get up at 7 to catch a 9:30ish flight. That's when the real fun started in the case of I'm Expelling This Now vs. Oh Please Body No!!! Once at the hotel. Once in line at airport check in. I upgraded to business class in a brief moment of lucidity, because I thought it would make the mechanics of things easier. I believe someone found me a wheelchair at that point. Or I might have just been riding on a luggage cart. I don't really know. Once in the bathroom on the way to the gate. Once immediately before takeoff. Once immediately after take off. Once just after we landed, while the whole plane was filing past me to get off. The flight attendants pointedly did not invite me to have a nice day as we deplaned.

I'm taking my real estate license exam this afternoon. I've memorized the number of feet in a mile and the number of square feet in an acre, using my one remaining brain cell. And that's pretty much the extent of my preparation. So we'll see how that goes.

I Passed!!!

Just found out. You're the second to know =)

Obsessively Thinking About Food

OMFG I just did some calculations with the WW points tracker thing, and it looks like 20 points = 1000 calories. That's ridiculous! No WONDER I keep going over! No WONDER I'm starving all the freaking time! No WONDER I'm dizzy! Ugh!

I believe you also get 200 calories of free raw vegetables built in, but plain raw vegetables taste like grass clippings. They also give you about 250 calories a day extra to use as you see fit, but I can't use those day to day because I end up having to eat out or at someone else's house at least once a week and I always end up using all my extras (like twice over) then. It's usually against my will too, so it's never like I'm eating anything good. It's stuff like dehydrated apricots in full fat yogurt over burned, overcooked white rice. Gross. I'll choke down as little as I can, then come home and find out it was 30 points.

Only 15 more minutes till 11. At 11, I get to eat an ounce of diced peaches. Goody goody. I think dieting causes a bar exam type level of crazy, but on a miniature scale. Related, but much less. Obviously. Nothing could ever be THAT bad.

Scared, Hungry, and Unemployed

I believe that even as I type this, a letter containing my fate is hurtling through the postal system towards me. Or, you know, crawling slightly slower than a snail.

I'm not sure if it's going to my apartment or house address. I think I may have optimistically put down the house one, since I was under the impression that we would be done and living there by September 1st. Silly me. We had our blueboard (like dry wall) delivered last night and we've already got most of the attic covered. It goes so fast. Once we have that up, we can have the plaster guy come, and then it will look like an actual house for the most part. That should be done by Thanksgiving.

We did get Trick or Treaters, despite the mess in the yard, the lack of porch lights, the rickety staircase, and the fact that everyone knows we don't live there. I stuck some ghosts on the door, sat in one window with my zebra ears on, and prominently displayed the candy cauldron in the other window. The best part is we only gave away about 2/3 of the candy, so all the more for me =)

Not that I can actually EAT the candy, mind you. Apparently, when you successfully lose weight, WW punishes you by taking away some of your points. I'm down to 20 now, which, as you well know, is the equivalent of like, 2 heads of lettuce and a linty mint you found in the bottom of your pocket (but only if you spit it out half way through.) This is particularly vexatious since I was STARVING all day yesterday. I seriously thought I was going to pass out at about 3pm. I don't see how this could possibly be sustainable long term.

On the job front, I managed to quit my temp job, although I couldn't do it on Monday because I was too scared. I did it before 10am on Tuesday though, so it was practically Monday. I haven't told them yet that I can't be here on Friday afternoon though. I hate asking for multiple things all at once.

I start my real estate job next Wednesday at noon. I'm already liking the hours. I've been scouring the internet for information on what to expect and I've found absolutely nothing. It's kind of shocking. I thought everything was on the internet now? I did find one article about recent grads in Boston going into real estate. I liked the parts where they talked about how rich and successful they are.

I got my real estate exam book yesterday and took a practice test first just to see how I'd do if I didn't study at all. I passed even though I skipped all the math questions because I didn't have a calculator. I only barely passed, but I do intend to study some, so I should be fine. The geeky law student in me was super excited to discover that they test all kinds of random bar exam law - not just property either, but agency, contracts, consumer protection, and a little bit of torts. I was so excited when I got a question about riparian water rights that I ran all the way upstairs to show Boyfriend, who was also thoroughly excited after I took 20 minutes to explain what I was talking about. Or maybe not. This is going to be great though. I only wish they were essay questions instead of multiple choice, so I could explain WHY your baseball ticket is just a license, instead of just filling in the bubble for choice B. I want extra credit!!!