i (still) hate the bar exam

Good Luck!

2009-07-28T10:22:00.003-05:00

To everyone taking the bar exam right now, try not to freak out. You only have to do better than about half the people in the room with you. So if the kid on your left freaks out and starts sobbing, and the kid on your right doesn't show up for the second day, you're golden.

Is It Too Late?

2009-05-30T09:17:00.004-05:00

Is it too late to decide to take a bar exam this summer? I can't decide. I guess it must not be, since I didn't really get serious about it the first time until July.

I was specifically thinking about Maryland, since it looks like I am about to move there. I finished my LLM and can't find a real job, so I asked my current job to transfer me to the DC office. Of course, as soon as my transfer was approved I didn't want to go anymore. But I think I'm just fearing change at the last minute. I've been wanting to get out of Boston for a while now. It's all well and good to live here while you're in school, or to be born here and never leave, but it doesn't have that much going on once you're done with school. I guess the plan is to move in with my parents (aggh! nooo!) temporarily and see if I can't find a job in NY or DC. Or back here I guess. I do have one more interview to go on before I leave. I feel like going through all the hassle and shelling out all the cash to haul all my stuff out of here would be just the thing the universe is waiting for to finally get me an offer up here. Cause clearly the universe gets a real kick out of laughing at me.

Fear Is In The Air

2009-02-23T21:12:00.005-05:00

Does it count as popular demand if there's only one person demanding it? I'm going to go with yes and give you a little update.

So I picked the worst year of my lifetime to graduate my LLM program - way to go me! I still believe if I had graduated last year, I would have a job by now. But never fear, I do have three interviews. I had one about a week ago and two this Thursday at our "big" spring career fair, which is actually quite small and ridiculously disappointing. It was all BigLaw, which is out of our league, and accounting firms. I had a miserable dream last night that I woke up an hour after my interviews should have been and went downstairs and my mother was like "oh I let you sleep because they called and said your interviews were cancelled!" The most horrifying part of the whole dream, I have to say, was that I was clearly back living with my mother. I admit I have been thinking about it in that "what would I do if this plane crashed" sort of way (answer: climb over the backs of the slow and weak to get the hell down that slide), but I think my dream showed me how completely wrong it would be to actually live it. I am almost 30 years old, and I will work in a fish gutting plant before I move back in with my parents. So there.

If you like the personal details, I'm going through what is essentially a miniature divorce with my boyfriend of five years. I swear to god if I make it out of this I am never living with anyone ever again, not even if I get married. The only bright side is that it's still about two months until final exams, so I should have at least a chance of pulling it back together by then. We are still in negotiations, I suppose, technically, but none of my interviews are even in the city we currently live in so.... whatever. All the better. It's too damn cold and snowy up here anyway.

Oops well it's almost 9:30 now, and that is my bedtime, because I am old and frail and get up at 6am.

Good luck to everyone who's about to take the wretched, awful bar exam. My best advice is to take a xanax or something both nights before. Something you have taken before and are familiar with the effects of. If I hadn't slept like a baby both nights before, I don't know what I would have done. My second best advice is to spend your last day reviewing the thing you suck the most at that you know will come up. For me, that was state civil procedure. You know the things you pretty much know as well as you're going to by now, so you might as well make a last ditch effort to memorize a few of those 60-day filing deadlines rather than trying to do one last massive review session.

LTNS

2008-11-15T08:47:00.004-05:00

My boss just found out he failed the bar exam for either the 4th or 5th time. This makes for a crabby boss, which filters down to a crabby me. As you might expect, he didn't announce it, but everyone somehow knows. My non-lawyer coworkers have been making stealthy trips to my cube all week to ask me just how that is possible, but I honestly don't know. He must just be really, really, really bad at standardized tests. Or maybe he has panic attacks when he has to take a test. He seems pretty smart in general, so I have no idea.

In other news, I wish I had done my LLM full time and graduated last year with a job, instead of going part time and graduating this year when there will be no jobs. I don't know what I'm going to do, because there is No Way I'm keeping the job I have for longer than another year. Preferably no longer than through August.

Although I am getting a big fat 25% raise in a month. And if there's any money left over in the budget (not likely) I qualify for a bonus based on my annual review. Woohoo! Don't get too excited for me though. All that will only just bring me up to what I would be making on my first day if I could ever manage to get an actual attorney job with the government.

Go Celtics! Woooo!

2008-06-18T16:13:00.003-05:00

Hooray! The Celtics won, and tomorrow is the parade - or "rolling rally" which, in its mobile form, is designed to prevent the masses from soiling any one spot in the city for too long.

God I love drunken 15 year olds on my commuter train in the morning! Doesn’t matter if they are Celtics, Red Sox, or Patriots fans – I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!

I also enjoy fighting through sticky throngs shouting “WOOOOOOOOO!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!!” to get to work. They are already out there. I could hear them even as I just typed it. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They have also constructed some sort of stage just out my nearest window and put a cover band up on it. They apparently instructed them to begin playing at 5pm today. I am still at work, trying to work. But nevertheless, everyone enjoys “CARRY ON MY WAYYYYYWARD SOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!!!” in every circumstance, at any time of day. I certainly hope they’re out there all day long tomorrow.

And, since the parade is practically going through our lobby, will we get to at least see 7 ft tall men riding on duck boats? Oh my no, because they scheduled some stupid whole office training for 9:30 tomorrow morning and god forbid they move it forward half an hour, or back to the afternoon. Because if they did anything that in any way benefited the workers here, people might stop quitting in droves. And what would we do if there were adequate staffing here? Nobody knows, because it has never happened, and we don’t want to find out now, thankyouverymuch.

NKOTB!!!

2008-05-10T14:22:00.003-05:00

Omg, guess what I just got tickets for! 1st row balcony baby! Because I care enough to go, but not enough to cough up the money to get out of the nosebleed section. And thusly, I have fulfilled every one of my 5th grade dreams that did not involve a pony.

Also exams are mercifully over and I do not wish to think, speak, or write about them until grades come out and I find out whether or not my evil sadist partnership professor has crushed my dream of clerking for the Tax Court. Today's exclusive focus is older dreams.

Now go ye forth, dying with jealousy.

Bar Exam News, Again, For Once

2008-04-24T16:12:00.003-05:00

Virginia's February bar results are out, and my friend passed! Good for her! I kept telling her she just freaked out the first time and would be fine. She's about to take another bar in July, because she has foresaken the state of Virginia, but she feels like she's going to do fine. Which is good, because she will. She's also wondering if there's any professional application to Commercial Paper, which she is now an expert in, having studied the fine, archaic points of the subject for the last year or so. I'm going to go ahead and guess no on that one.

In other news, it's the last day of classes here, finally, thank god. There were a bunch of 1L's in the hallway all giddy from having given their professors their presents. Do all law schools have this stupid tradition? I can't imagine what ever possessed people to want to give multiple expensive presents, much nicer than anything they could afford for themselves, to the sadists who tortured them all year. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome, but I did not suffer from that, although first year was certainly all about suffering, and so I still don't understand.

As I walked up to the buliding, there were also four girls, who I can only assume were undergrads, conducting some sort of parade down the main street on campus, bearing posterboard signs I was too far away to read, and a six foot inflatable p enis. I know it was six feet long, because I had to inflate one manually once, in college. They went into the School of Religion with it.

I'm also moderately excited to notice that my little blog counter thing recently went over 10,000. I guess a lot of people hate the bar exam. Shocking, I know, but apparently true.

Stalker?

2008-04-07T17:03:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I like to check the blog of my BFF from college who I rarely talk to anymore, just to make sure she's still alive. I guess I was not particularly concerned for a spell there, because she took her blog down (because someone was stealing from it - for what purpose? I can't imagine) back in January. January of 2007. Oops.

Now instead of emailing her - too obvious - I googled things I thought she might write about. My third try was "Jane & Joe" - her high school friend & conjoined boyfriend, and she popped right up. Then I read a few posts to confirm. It's true what they say: she is still alive.

But here's the thing: I know she has other people we both know who read it, because they post things there. But I feel kind of stalkerish, because she writes things she kind of hides from me. Like she became a vegetarian in college and I already was one and still am, but I know she's not because she eats steak in her blog now. But when I see her she doesn't eat meat. And I want to be like dude, stop living a lie, but then I don't know if I'm not supposed to read her innermost thoughts or whatever.

Are you all still out there? What do you think?

Ew, Loser

2008-03-23T14:37:00.003-05:00

To the guy in the Tax LLM Program who taunted the other student today that he has a “killer outline” and replied that he “has his sources” when asked where he got it:

You sir, are a dick. The laws of decency require that after telling people about your “killer outline” you offer to share it with them. It makes me sick to sit in class with you, you pompous ass. I certainly hope that the gaps in your outline coincide precisely with the areas tested on the exam. It is also my sincere wish that, tonight, having drunk too much green beer, you go home with a slutty undergrad from whom you contract the herpes. Harsh? Sure, but you and people like you are the reason I had a miserable three years in law school to begin with.

Sincerely,

The Girl Who’s Going to Get a Better Grade Than You Anyway

P.S. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!!!!!

(Obviously this is from a few days ago - but you probably can't read my dates anyway, seeing as how they're in Russian. Heheh. My inner Russian major geek continues to thrive, years out. I'm even making borscht for dinner tonight - pure coincidence.)

Good Job, Brain

2008-03-03T18:05:00.000-05:00

This afternoon they were cleaning my work bathroom, so I had to go to the sketchy bathroom down the hall that's open to the public, and while I was washing my hands, something in one of the stalls started making this clicking noise, and of course my completely normal reaction was OMG IT'S A DEMON! And then I was like, ok, no, calm down, demon's don't exist, it's probably just a murderer, like in Scream. And that is the point when I freaked out and exited the bathroom without drying my hands. Because that's a totally reasonable adult thought process to have at work in the afternoon, thank you, brain. Although, in my defense, the bathroom does resemble the one in Saw in several of it's key design elements (dim, flickering lights, general dankness, etc.)

Woah There

2008-02-06T20:08:00.000-05:00

Today, I spoke on the phone with the Nastiest Woman Alive. I had to call another federal agency to check whether this guy had done something so I could check off a box. I innocently dialed the number listed on my form and asked to speak with him. The woman who answered was like “This is not his personal cell phone!!!” I was like I’m sorry, do I sound like a prostitute? And in any case, are you his wife? Is this how you always answer your work phone?

So I said “I’m calling from the US Dept of Miracles, Office of Very Important Programs and I need to find out if one of his employees has done the thing he was supposed to do.” And she said “THIS IS A BUSINESS PHONE!!!” Really? Is it? Then maybe you should ACT PROFESSIONAL WHEN YOU ANSWER IT???? What is it you imagine a business phone is USED for? And are you, by any chance, on work release from the local insane asylum??

So I told her that, in fact, I was also calling from a business phone for a business purpose and could she possibly give me the number of someone who could provide me with the information I needed since she obviously did not have it. So she did. Then I asked her what her name was, and how to spell it, and what her supervisor’s name was, and how to spell that, and what his phone number was, and if he was in at the moment. And she started to say something nasty again and I was like “Look, I’m sorry if you’re having a bad day, but I’m just trying to do my job, and that means I need to hang up now.” Click.

What a nasty bitch! I couldn’t believe it! And she works for the very crappiest, lowliest agency there is (think: x-ray machines) so I cannot imagine where she developed that attitude. I got HIVES from having to talk to her! HIVES!!! That means I could sue her for intentional infliction of emotional distress, right?! Maybe I will if class tonight is really boring.

Gunners Off The Starboard Bow

2008-02-04T16:51:00.001-05:00

Who the hell are these people who come to class knowing all the answers to the professor’s questions? And where do they find them? And what are they doing in my class? I come to class to learn what the answer is. If I knew the answer on my own, I wouldn’t need to take a class. I guess they paid for the class because they have a lot of disposable income and no friends to spend it on? That would also explain why they have so much free time to spend memorizing obscure portions of the Treasury Regulations on the off chance that the may one day be called upon to recite them in my class? Maybe they come to class to make me feel stupid. Well I’ll tell you what, smartasses, you talk a good line, but you must be damn stupid, or else I wouldn’t have gotten such good grades last semester. So you can take your Subchapter K and suck it.

For what it’s worth, I’m thinking it tastes briny, like pickles.

ADD & NYR

2008-01-27T12:06:00.001-05:00

Oh lord. I've been trying to study since 10am Saturday and I just can't do it. I did spend a good long time yesterday though looking up the symptoms of Adult ADD and deciding I have it and that it's therefore not my fault that I spent all that time wasting time instead of just studying the tax aspects of Bankruptcy.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Can't most people sit in an empty room and read 100 pages of the most boring fine print ever committed to paper without getting distracted? No? Well then WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO???? It's just not fair. And I know I brought this on myself by going back to school, but it's not like I had a choice - I'm trying to get a JOB here, it's not like I'm doing this for the pure joy of education. Or because of my apparent fondness for Overwhelming Indebtedness.

Dammit. This was New Year's Resolution #5 - do my reading at some point BEFORE the weekend before finals.

In other belated NYR news, #4 was to get renter's insurance, which has not gotten done, but I at least got a quote.

#3 was to stop spending money, which is going great except for the $10k I just dropped on school and the $4k on a stupid medical expense - both of which make it seem stupid to deprive myself of a $3 latte. I don't even really buy $3 lattes. I mostly buy a cup of tea and two pieces of toast from the office cafeteria, for a grand total of $1.20. What's so wrong with that???

#2 was to go to the gym, which turned out to be easy, because I go in the middle of the day to escape from work, and I would go ALL DAY if I could rather than work - excellent strategy, I must say. My knees and elbows have been hurting though, so I'm clearly doing something wrong. Although it's less painful than the persistant soul ache I get from being in the office.

#1 is my perennial favorite - floss. I was doing moderately well with that until I ran out of floss last week. I have no plans to buy more floss, so that's the end of that until some drops out of the sky. Oh well. I have an understanding with my hygenist anyway - she asks if I floss, I say no, she looks shocked, and life goes on.

Validation

2008-01-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

They just released our grades.

I got an A, an A-, and another A-.

This is unbelievable. I struggled to get out of law school with my 3.0. Now I have a freaking 3.8.

And the A is in the class I thought I failed since the exam was so long I couldn't finish it. The highlight of my answer was undoubtedly the essay question I answered "There were no gift tax consequences, except in those transactions that were subject to the gift tax." There must be some dumb people in my program with me, holding up the other end of the curve. And the thing is, I'm not even sure there IS a curve, since the classes are so small.

This was inspiring to me, so I mustered up the energy to make a phone call I've been avoiding. You may recall that I was interviewed very successfully for my Absolute Dream Job a few months ago. My interviewers recommended me enthusiasticaly to the hiring committee, but my application was subsequently rejected with no explanation. I got a form letter rejection email. I wrote back to ask what the problem was. They gave a purely administrative reason that was not based in fact (think: you're not a citizen of this country, when in fact I am, or similar.) I got the name of the person in charge of the hiring committee and emailed them asking that my application be reconsidered, or at the very least that the administrative error be corrected so my application is not summarily rejected again when I reapply next year. Two weeks passed. I haven't heard back. I've been meaning to call her to follow up, but I SO do not want to. I knew she wouldn't be in the office today because it was a holiday, so, confidence bolstered by my PimpAss Grades, I finally picked up the phone.

And... her phone has been disconnected. Hmm. Perhaps she's been fired for gross mismanagement of the recruitment program? One can only hope. So tomorrow I've got to get in touch with someone I know who can tell me what's up. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for me that there was, at the very least, some sort of public shaming ceremony held before she was placed on indefinite administrative leave without pay.

Sadistic Bastards

2008-01-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

They were supposed to release grades on Friday by 5pm. They've had all our grades for weeks. They did not release our grades on Friday, however, despite the fact that I checked compulsively throughout the day from 7am on. They then sent an email at 3:40am saying there was something wrong with the server. I suspect, though, that they sent the email at 3:40pm, when they decided it would be nice to get out of work a little ealry to enjoy their long weekend, and just set the email to send later. Thanks guys!!!

In re: Request for Good News

2007-12-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

Hmm... I generally only ever have news that ranges from Not Bad to Mildly Exciting. Not necessarily good. Here are the Mildly Not Bad Things that happened to me this week:

1. Two other new people at New Job are lawyers, so I'm not the only loser who can't get a job. And one actually practiced for several years before realizing that small firms pay nothing and are run by cranky old trolls who just want to suck the business dry while working their one associate to death, whereas at the government you can make more and work less. So that is somewhat affirming of my choice. Not Bad.

2. As of Monday I am eligible for matching contributions to my 401(k) like plan at work, which means I'll be getting about $2500 for free this year. Mildly Exciting.

3. I don't think I failed my second exam, unlike my first exam, which I undoubtedly did fail, due to the fact that it was harder than the bar exam (I swear to god it was) and I didn't even have time to finish it. Bad. But the second one was pretty easy. Not Bad.

4. We're getting a 3.15% cost of living increase, which inches my new paycheck ever closer to the realm of acceptability. Mildly Exciting.

5. I went for my laser eye surgery consultation and my corneas are mercifully of the appropriate thickness, so one month from now I should be freed from the tyranny and oppression of Acuvue. Mildly Exciting.

6. We got out of work early for snow on Thursday. This almost never happens in the frozen tundra of the northeast. Of course by turning us away from work, they were sending us out to face certain death on the icy, unplowed streets full of cranky nutjobs trying to get home one car length faster than you, however many innocent lives they have to take to realize that dream. But still. Not Bad.

7. My last exam is on Monday, and then there's no hateful school for almost a month. Not Bad.

Classy

2007-12-01T15:48:00.000-05:00

So we were in a casino and trying to locate a cheapy table to play at and all of a sudden someone totally slammed into me. Like, omigod we've been hit!, torpedo-force kapow! "Hey!" I exclaimed, less than delighted. I saw a smallish woman had stopped a few paces away. She wheeled around. She was so totally a prostitute. Not like a Julia Roberts in fishnets whore, but you can tell. She stalked back over to where we were standing. "Excuse ME" she said, sarcastically. "Thank you," I replied sweetly, inching away from the knife I assume was in her boot.

Later, I left Boyfriend playing blackjack so I could shove money down the vast, bottomless pit of the video roulette machine, thus supporting the local economy in order to provide local people with jobs that do not involve carrying knives in their boots with which to threaten tourists. Apparently while I was gone some hooker tried to pick him up. He took a while to catch on, so he was talking to her. After he realized what she was up to, he decided to ask her what she did. She said she worked at McDonald's. He asked what she did there. She said she was a fry cook. He said she didn't look like a fry cook, and she was like "Baby, I'm the fastest fry in the West."

Upset, But Not Suprised

2007-11-30T18:59:00.001-05:00

I got a generic form email this afternoon from the Accounting Firm talking about how they met me at OCI and can't hire everyone and blahblahblah we don't want you. Part of me wonders if I got it in error, since I'm not just some schmuck they met for 15 minutes at OCI as stated in the letter, and since they've been so fucking disorganized about this whole process, with multiple people from all over the country calling me repeatedly to ask for information they already had. I also resent their lie that they can't hire everyone. They could absolutely hire everyone they meet, all day, every day, because they have just that much money. That must mean someone there really hated me. Isn't that charming. Of course, I knew I wouldn't get the job, because I felt like the interview went well, which, clearly, is the kiss of death.

I assume this also means I won't be getting a positive response about Government Dream Job, since I thought that went well too. I emailed today to ask if I was ever going to hear anything, since it's been, oh, five weeks since my interview and they have not communicated with me directly in any way at all. The person I emailed today said the woman that had the information was out. I'm 90% sure it's this lady who wrote this nasty email that I saw last year about how they couldn't care less about anyone outside of the top 10% of their class (this, despite the fact that almost everyone who works there went to some crappy substandard school in the middle of nowhere - apparently their recruiting desires and reality don't synch up very well - maybe it's because they go around insulting people from good schools.)

So yeah, this is just great. I feel worse now than if I just hadn't gotten any interviews at all, because I got all optimistic that this LLM thing was going to be the solution to all my job problems, but apparently it's just another fucking expensive worthless degree I'll never use. Hurrah!

Also it was my birthday on Tuesday and I spent it in Vegas but who cares... I shouldn't be going on vacations anyway if I'm just going to be poor and in debt for the rest of my life.

Show Me The... Meh... I Never Saw That Movie

2007-11-19T19:02:00.001-05:00

I'm jumping ship for a higher grade position. Yes, I'm leaving my beloved IRS for the Dept of Who The Hell Cares If It's Not About Taxes. A higher grade means more $$ - over 50% more than I was currently making. That's a hell of a raise. I'm mostly bitter and sad that I couldn't keep my job, which I love, and just make more money, but the horrifice communist bureaucracy that is the Office of Personnel Managment didn't want that to happen. Sigh.

I also had my second interview with my Accounting Firm last Friday. I thought that went reasonably well, and they seemed pretty impressed with my credentials, so we'll see. They also seem to have a terrible, disorganized recruiting system, so for all I know they've already made my application disappear into the ether by accident. They said we should hear by mid-December.

I haven't heard anything about Government Dream Job since just after my first interview, when I heard that I was being elevated to the Mystic Council in the Home Office. They supposedly meet once a month, and it hasn't been quite one month yet since the interview, so I suppose they aren't late yet. Plus it's the government so who knows if I'll ever hear anything.

In other news, I'm super bad far behind in my LLM classes and I am not going to be able to catch up because a) I work full-time, b) we have no reading period. There's also unhappy factor c) they are making me start my new job the day before my first final. I said I really, really had a problem with that, and they said too bad. If they weren't going to pay me so much, I would have a serious problem with that. Argggh.

So I estimate, based on my current knowledge of the law I was supposed to be learning and the fact that I will just have to wing it on my exams, that I will get a B, a B-, and a B+ (the B+ being in my How the IRS Works class, but the grade still not being very high because I'm sure there's some a-hole gunning for an A who's memorizing Circular 230 line by line right this very minute.) That averages out to a nice round 3.0 though, so I'm not going to lose sleep about it. And I'm sure as hell not studying over Thanksgiving. Maybe on the flight to Vegas for my bday after T-day though. Mayyyybe. If I run out of back issues of Glamour. I'll at least take the book. In my checked luggage. If it doesn't push me over the weight limit. That's all anyone can really ask, right?

Good News, Good Dream

2007-11-05T19:24:00.000-05:00

I heard from my career services lady that she talked to one of the Dream Job interviewers and they are going to recommend me to the committee. Yipee! So now, I assume, I just have to get through a callback interview and not have the foul HR demons from hell dredge up any arcane rules that prevent me from being hired. Awesome!

And then last night I had the best dream that I was getting it on with the other interviewer. For, like, hours and hours. It was great. Then my stupid boyfriend got up to go to work and woke me up and I was like "Glarggh!! Shh!!!" and fell back asleep right away, but the dream had changed and we were at the circus and I couldn't find my seats. Significantly less fun.

I've got my callback interview for my accounting firm set for next Friday. I'm trying not to freak out. I tried to get a suit tailored for the occasion, but the lady I went to was like "Ohhh nooo I can't feex this - your body shaped funny!" So instead, I will be wrapping my funny shaped body in my shapeless suit jacket. I've never had a tailor not butcher the garment I left them with to the point of unwearability anyway, so I'm sure it's for the best.

Two More Interviews - Neat!

2007-10-30T16:07:00.000-05:00

That's right. I'm Pop-u-lar. I've only been back in school for two months, and it has yielded 2 interviews, 1 callback, and a call from a recruiter based on a reference from an alumna. I heart my LLM. The third interview was just the result of my relentless pursuit of cushy government jobs that have little or nothing to do with the law. I also heart USAJobs.

So Monday I had an interview with my total government attorney dream job. The guys who interviewed me were young enough to find their way around the web, so I won't say specifically what it was, but it was the people I went shmoozing/boozing with in a previous post. And it turned out to be with two people who were there that night, who I had already met then and several other times, so it was minimally stressful. They seemed pretty positive about it. I don't want to be, because they can't crush a dream I pretend I don't have, right? I have a feeling the evil government HR people are going to screw me on a technicality. Sigh. But at least I had the interview...

Today I had an interview for a job I couldn't care less about, for a different government agency, but that pays 50% more than what I do now. Nothing else I'm interviewing for would start for at least 6 or 7 months, so I guess if they offered it to me I'd ignore that strange guilty feeling that comes from god knows where and take it. So we shall see how that works out.

Actually, this particular agency totally screwed me when I applied for this very job at the end of July. It occurs to me that I never blogged the story of how. Basically, they called me up, interviewed me, then told me that, because of an HR "oversight" they never should have interviewed me at all. And the reason they were digging around and discovered the oversight was because they wanted to hire me after that interview. Nice, non? I keep meaning to write a letter to that woman's supervisor so she can be sure to have it in her personnel file for all eternity. Maybe I'll do that right after I write my Xmas cards (and no, I'm not writing those *now* - I just schedule my letter writing way ahead.)

This wretched government HR error is not to be confused with the time when the Dept of Homeland Suckurity HR people totally screwed me on a job offer back last spring. And I've since become pretty sure that they were completely incorrect in the decision that was made there, and if I had known enough to fight it, I could have been earning almost a living wage this whole entire year. I hate them so much. I did send a letter to that evil whore's supervisor. So you see, I am capable of following through on my idle letter-writing threats.

This Is Why I Still Hate The Bar Exam

2007-10-20T06:38:00.000-05:00

Back in the spring of 2000, I studied in France for a semester. There were a bunch of smart girls on my program; one in particular who had been in an awful car accident that took a year to recover from, but was still going to graduate with a 3.98 something. I was starting to look at grad school that semester, since I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after graduating with a degree in Sorority Life and a minor in Oh God I Shouldn't Have Had That Tequila.

My friend suggested that I go to law school. (And she knows I blame her to this day for how that turned out, but that's a different story.) She said I was smart and that it made sense for smart women to become lawyers. She convinced me. We were going to be human rights lawyers and live in the South of France and make beauty products from lavendar in our spare time.

So I took the LSAT and went to law school. She chickened out at the last minute because she gets awful test anxiety, despite the ridiculously high GPA, so she ended up a year behind me.

She took her evil bar exam this year. The results came out from her state last week. I've checked multiple times, but unless she seriously changed her name without telling me, she is not on the list of people who passed.

It's just so ridiculous. I know on an intellectual level that smart people must fail the bar all the time, but what I forced myself to believe when I had to take it myself was that smart people didn't fail. I figured stupid people failed; people who didn't take studying seriously failed; people who were going through a messy divorce failed; people with a new baby at home failed; people who were in car accidents on the way to the testing site failed. There had to be something else going on for people to fail. But why should smart people who would make excellent lawyers fail? Why would we want to keep smart, great lawyers out of the profession? It doesn't make any sense. And god knows I had this concept beaten out of me in first semester Criminal Law, but it's not FAIR.

She already has a job, so she's going to have to work full time while she tries to study for February. She also failed her MPRE, so she's already got to study for that this fall, too. And her test anxiety is already bad, but I just know the pressure of feeling like she has to pass or else she'll get fired is going to affect her. Argh. Not fair at all.

The Price Is Right

2007-10-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I stayed home "sick" mainly to watch the new Price Is Right with Drew Carey that premiered yesterday, which I Tivo'd, as well as the new episode today. What are you gonna do about it?

I also wanted 2 extra hours of sleep. And I put my inner whiny do-gooder back to sleep by promising to study for pretty much the whole day (after TPIR is over, obviously.) We'll see how that goes.

The host change seems ok. DC is a better choice than that guy from Saved By The Bell and whoever all else they were considering. The host can't be someone with an obtrusive personality or who wants to be famous too badly. I'm ok with this. Although I think they rigged all the games because everyone won their individual prize and two people got the dollar on their spins. And the little trashy sorority girl won a trailer. Heh.

I love the old people commercials. They make me think of my Estate Planning class.

As a bonus, now that I've established a fake illness, I can try to get out of work a couple hours early tomorrow to go shmooze people at this school career thing that's at 3 tomorrow, after I drag myself in like a hero.

OCI + B4 = $$$

2007-10-13T08:54:00.000-05:00

Omg! Omg! I got an OCI interview! It's unreal. I found out on Friday. I was in absolute, total shock. Me! OCI! Two words, never before seen outside of bitter rants! Well ok, I did have one as a 2L, for the Post Office, where the woman told me she thought I'd be incredibly bored. And I had two, as a 3L, that led to nothing, but that was over TWO YEARS ago.

It was for a Big Four accounting firm. I had it on Wednesday. It was 45 minutes, but it ended up not seeming particularly long. The guy didn't seem that interested in finding anything out about me, so I was freaking out afterwards.

But what did I find in my email this morning? It was an invitation for a second interview! Omg!!! I have never had a second interview! Not ever! Eeeeeeee!

I'm SO EXCITED! They pay money there! Cash money! Money I could pay my student loans with! I don't care if they want to hang me upside down in the basement of the building and bleed me dry - I would agree to anything for approximately double what I'm making now. Oh god think of the shoes I could buy - THINK OF THE SHOES!!!

Anyone know anything about second interviews? Or accounting firms? Or have shoe recommendations? Help me out people!

Creepy Weirdo

2007-09-25T15:45:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure I sit in my How the IRS Works class and smile gleefully every time the professor talks about how the IRS has these masses of authority to come in and seize your assets or put a lien on your paycheck. I hope no one notices, because I sit towards the back, but if they do, I bet I look creepy.

In other creepy weirdo news, I want to punch every 2L I see walking around in a suit (obviously doing on campus interviews and about to make a crapload of money to not do very much at all, based solely on some luck as a 1L.) That's normal though, right?

I Swear To God

2007-09-24T17:50:00.000-05:00

If I go to work and they tell me I look "awful" one more time... I'm going to... do... well nothing I suppose. But it will continue to make me feel bad. It's not my fault I have extraordinarily thin skin that shows the world exactly how much sleep I'm (not) getting. Apparently, I look particularly awful on Wednesdays (my classes being held on Monday and Tuesday evenings.) They seem to think it's because I go out partying every night. I think they must think I'm ten years younger than I actually am.

Anyone know a good, thick, long-wearing concealer? Maybe one that shoots out refractive laser beams to thwart nosy, tactless colleagues?

Schmoozing For The Anti-Social

2007-09-08T11:51:00.001-05:00

A guy from the place I most want to work came to talk to us at orientation on Tuesday for ten minutes. He left a stack of cards on a table. I took one. On Thursday, I emailed him. He wrote back immediately and said I could either come by the office sometime and he would introduce me around, or that a bunch of people from the office were going out for drinks and I could join them on Friday. I being both a current and former law student, opted for the drinks.

I got the location and went to find them last night after work (or, frankly, at 4pm, since we all work for the Feds). Unfortunately I had only seen this guy once, for ten minutes, in a stream of other people I had never seen before. And he had been wearing a suit. No one in the bar was wearing a suit.

I circled the bar. I ordered a drink. I strained my ears, listening for one-liners involving the tax code followed by hysterical laughter. Nothing. Then I spotted a government ID dangling from a girl's purse. This was not dispositive, as there were many other government employees likely to be in the area. Then, I got my break: two girls came in, spoke to the people at the table, and went to bring over some extra chairs:

"Excuse me," I said, stepping in front of one, "but do you work for the IRS?" She, nervous perhaps of inciting a bar fight, admitted that she did.

"Is one of you Joe?"

"Um, yes. Do you know Joe?"

"Well, no, but he said he would be here."

"Have you met Joe before?"

"Well, no, not really."

Her, alarmed: "Are you stalking Joe??"

But overall I think it went pretty well. I figured since none of them are in any position to affect hiring in any way, I might as well just be myself and try to get them to like me. I got the girl who thought I was a stalker to stay two hours longer than she intended to with my favorite work-related bizzaro medical story.

And Joe, which is obviously not his real name, said I could still stop by the office to meet the higher ups.

Long Time, No See

2007-09-04T18:03:00.001-05:00

It's my first day back to school. All of my classes this semester are in the two rooms that I had all my 1L classes in. It's trippy in a bad way. I swear I'm having actual visual disturbances. Unpleasant. I was doing my reading at the last minute last night and that was unpleasantly similar to law school too. I very much hated law school.

It's not all bad though. At least now I'm a Law Student again, instead of just severely underemployed. And one of my professors is pretty hot, so that's a bonus. And I can blog in class, thanks to wifi.

Official Supergenius

2007-08-04T15:17:00.000-05:00

I got my acceptance letter today for my Tax LLM program. I'm now officially mildly excited to be going back to school. I feel at least 20% less pathetic already.

When It Rains...

2007-07-19T19:31:00.000-05:00

I start my new job on Monday. This morning, Thursday, I got a phone call from the Dept of Labor wanting to interview me for a job I applied for months ago. On Monday. It pays more than 50% more than what I am/will be making. It has potential to pay an absolutely obscene amount of money within five years. It's conveniently located in the very same Federal building I'll be working in. And so I will be leaving my new job early on Monday for an appointment of the very vaguest description.

This afternoon, I received another phone call. Another IRS job I applied for wanted to interview me on Thursday. It's for the same level of position I'm currently/will be in. I politely declined and sent a polite follow up email when they asked me to withdraw my application in writing. Those people work just across the hall. That could have been awkward, and it also would have been pretty pointless since it's a completely lateral move with no upward potential.

Now I was very excited about the first (second? if my new job is the first) job, but since I turned down the second/third/last one, I'm afraid for my interview karma. I don't know why I'm such a superstitious freak. I suspect I can blame my Russian grandmother for a good chunk of that. But anyway, logically I know it would be a waste of everyone's time for me to go to the interview knowing there's almost know way I'd take the job and that someone else will get to go instead and they'll be thrilled. But then the stupider, stronger portion of my brain says that turning down one offer will suddenly cause all other offers to spontaneously combust.

Somebody argue some reason into me. Boyfriend doesn't understand how my crazy girl brain can even leap to these conclusions, so he's being less than useless and is tired of hearing me whine about it.

Everlasting Anxiety

2007-07-16T19:11:00.000-05:00

I had an awful dream last night that they were going to reject my LLM application because they found out I petitioned the Academic Standards Committee to take some of my exams late while I was in law school. So I was in such a bad mood all morning. They had better hurry up and accept me.

Less than a week till I start the new job. Eek! I need to find a new hair place asap and get my roots done so I'm not like That New Girl With The Awful Dye Job, as though there will be more than one new girl. Actually I suck with names, so I'll be the one doling out stupid names, like Lady I Don't Know But I Think She Wore A Pink Shirt On The First Day And I Wish People Weren't Allowed To Change Their Clothes Or Move Around Too Much Until You've Got To Know Their Names Or They Should At Least All Wear Name Tags and they'll still be standing there looking at me like "I wonder if the new girl is maybe autistic or something because I said hi to her ten minutes ago and she's just staring at me like she's thinking really hard for no reason, but DAMN she's got fine hair."

I'm looking forward to reclaiming my Life Outside Of Work (or, you know...watching more CSI) since I won't be able to work overtime at the new job. I've been doing the ten hours a day six days a week thing for the last six months. And, mind you, STILL making less than I could have made straight out of college! Stellar! I can't wait to reclaim my weekends though.

Faking Like I'm Rich Is Hot

2007-07-06T14:46:00.000-05:00

I bought myself a Marc Jacobs Blake in Petrol today. Mmm. Dee-licious. We shall not discuss how many hours I had to work to acquire it. The important thing is that I bought it and now no one else can have it. Mine, all mine. I'll post pictures of my precious pretty pookums later. I must go fondle my bag now. So soft... so teal... Precioussss.

It's Like Getting Punched In The Face, But Good

2007-06-28T15:32:00.000-05:00

To my horror, on Tuesday my boss came to tell me I had a phone call. Phone calls, in my unit, mean you screwed something up bad and someone is calling to scream at you about it, possibly because their house, car, boat, and/or child was just repossessed. So I flipped out and begged her to take a message and refused to take hold of the handset when she thrust it at me. All the while, as it turned out, the person was not actually on hold. Thanks, Phone Clerk, for being so competent!!!

It turned out to be someone calling from another department. They wanted to interview me on Thursday. Today was Thursday. Today was 150 degrees. I got to take paid administrative time to go to my interview because it's technically part of my job (or so my manager says - and am I really going to question that?) They gave me four whole hours. Sweet!

Now I've been applying to internal postings since my 90-day moratorium was up, which generally means faxing 10 pages of forms to such romantic faraway destinations as Ogden, UT and then never hearing anything back ever. Or, sometimes, you get a little form back in the mail that says you are eligible. Eligible is one step away from qualified, and qualified means you go on the Big List that they may eventually decide to interview off of if they choose to and their funding isn't cut first. But, shockingly, these people are crazy fast and today I got offered a new job.

Surprise!

I am in ubershock. My mother says to just take it. My reasons for hesitating are super lame: (1) I have friends at my job now, (2) taking public transportation enrages me, (3) I'm going to miss out on probably a month and a half of overtime (and consequently not get laid off in September, so you would think the two things would cancel out in my brain, but no.) Also I'm always afraid of hurting my bosses' feelings when I quit, which is totally stupid and irrational and yet inevitably causes me overwhelming guilt.

So I guess I'm going to go ahead and take it. It's in a much, much more prestigious area than the one I'm in now. And I'll get to do tax law stuff, although it's still not a Real Lawyer job. Oh, and did I mention they're going to send me for a week of training in a fabulous sunny southern destination that I have never been to? Oh yeah. That too. F* being a lawyer dude, I want to be a government drone! Woohoo!

Because You All So Care

2007-06-19T16:12:00.000-05:00

I got my LLM application in two weeks ago. One of my letter writers wrote down that my deadline was July instead of June though, so it's still not complete. So I should get an answer within two weeks of god only knows when.

In the meantime, I'm trying to decipher the financial aid rules for part-time students. I can't figure out if you can get your whole Stafford loan up to the max limit if you're taking half the courses, or if you only get half for half. It would be so much nicer if I could have all of it, so I'm going to just assume that's how it works until someone comes along and crushes my dreams.

They're telling us at work now that we'll probably be there until at least the end of September. Now I don't want to get laid off, because I can't afford it, but it would be nice if they could pick a freaking date and let us know in advance. And "probably September" doesn't count, because they could come in tomorrow and fire us all effective immediately, or we could be stuck there until November with all our things packed in a box not knowing if we'll be back the next day.

If we are still there once school starts (assuming I get accepted, because why wouldn't I, right? I'm extraordinarily lucky, as you know) it's going to be a big hassle because I want to take one class that would require me to leave half an hour early once a week. Now those of you with human, or even just "human" bosses are thinking "well gee, that sounds reasonable, who would ever deny you that, especially if you have annual leave stored up or agree to come in half an hour early that day?" Unfortunately, I work for an evil soulless bureaucracy, headed, they say, by the Devil himself, and I'm afraid doing anything week after week would constitute an Alteration To My Normal Tour Of Duty, which is a big no-no and punishable by death by firing squad. Seriously. Look it up.

In other news, I'm gonna do me some ghetto weight watchers for a few weeks and see if I can't fit my fat ass back into my cute summer dresses (that are left over from high school, back when my parents paid for everything and I could therefore afford things that one would describe as "cute" and not just "cheap" or "mommy can i give the homeless lady a quarter?" "no dear, she'll only spend it on liquor.") I'm not paying for it, since I'm poor, so I made myself a spreadsheet and decided 25 points a day sounds like a good number. We'll see how that works out. The first two hours have gone well.

Oh, and I also chopped off 12 inches of hair, which I'm supposed to donate whenever I feel ambitious enough to find a padded envelope, and dyed it bright red. I hate it. I went with a friend from work to her sketchass unlicensed ethnic salon (did not know this beforehand, obviously) and feel lucky to have escaped with any hair at all. Not amused. The dye looks cheap and the haircut they gave me has to be blow dried every morning so as not to look like leftover dead rat casserole, which is something I specifically said I could not deal with. Bastards. And this is exactly why I had 12 inches of excess accumulated hair in the first place. So I guess it's back to the drawing board in another two years.

I Love Costco

2007-05-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

I have previously posted about my smoldering desire to own a piece of Marc Jacobs arm candy. I have been seriously fantasizing about buying one since I'm working all this overtime - it would only take me a month to make the money, which seems entirely reasonable. My fantasies have been thwarted, though, by the fact that my computer is an unholy piece of crap that makes me blind with rage every time I even think about it. I've been fantasizing about replacing it with a Mac, then taking it outside, beating it to death with a pickax, then having Boyfriend hoist it up in the air while I shoot six inch roofing nails through it. Heheh. God I feel better just thinking about it, but then I realize I'm still typing on the dirty MF'er and there I go, blind with rage again. Argh!

Anyway, back to subjects that don't make me shoot streams of black wrathful bile out my ears, I was browsing Costco.com, as I will of a Sunday afternoon, and to my shock I found that they sell the very purse I want, and at a discount. You may look, but please don't buy in case quantities are limited. Unlike evil eBay, I trust Costco not to sell me cheap rags and tell me they're designer. So now I must seriously weigh my options. The purse, while less useful in general, will surely outlast a new laptop since all my previous laptops have kicked the vile spittoon after two years at the most. So I don't know yet.

All this, of course, is ignoring the $4,000 I just racked up at the dentist this week. On top of the $7,000 from before mind you. Not to mention the Monstrous School Debt that I'm about to (hopefully) start adding to again. Ahh...but I'm in denial about all that, so we'll just close all the monthly statements and pretend that never happened.

Ethics For Lawyers

2007-05-13T08:30:00.000-05:00

I guess I've decided to apply for the LLM in Taxation thing. I am not pleased, but I'm a little bit excited. Not about having the chance to earn another useless degree, paying $35,000 for the privilege, or attending boring classes that teach me less than nothing. No - I'm excited because I'll be an LLM Candidate, which sounds so much better than Unemployed Loser (although I suppose I'm technically a Federal Employee, but I consider my job so temporary that I can't bring myself to think of myself that way.)

The scariest part, aside from the fact that I'll be dumping another huge truckload of money on top of my Bottomless Pit of Massive Debt, is trying to find two law professors who "know me well" and convincing them to write something vaguely positive about me within a set time frame. My law professors did not know me well. My strategy, therefore, was to email the four professors I had in my last semester of school, hoping against all odds that my name might trigger some glimmer or recollection, and that they would take pity on me and just write something since I was obviously reduced to begging for help from complete strangers.

Shockingly enough, I did get two responses right away. One person just offered to do it, thank god, but the other person said something kind of weird. He said he would be happy to help me if I would just send him a complete draft of what I want said about me for him to look over. He basically wants me to write it so he can sign it.

Now people at work assured me that this happens all the time and there is nothing shady about it at all, but I'm not so sure. So I'm asking you - the conscience I never had - for your opinion. Is this normal? Is this ethical? Is this a golden opportunity? Do people get expelled or fired for that kind of thing? Eh? Speak up - I'm getting old.

Oh Lord Won't You Give Me A Job At Appeals

2007-04-27T05:42:00.000-05:00

Well I don't think it went particularly well. But, clearly, when you think an interview/test/first date has gone well, it actually means you're a miserable failure (not that the event it self was, mind you - you know you're the big loser.) I don't know if the opposite is true though.

It sounded to me like they were looking to hire the least lawyerly lawyer possible. They want someone who won't write 60 pages when will do and who can take orders from a non-JD without getting some kind of superiority complex. They also kept saying they knew I could do the job but that they're looking for the right personality fit.

That's my downfall I think. If they want to see people's personalities, they should take us out drinking or camping in the woods or make us express ourselves through the wonders of collage. The one thing I'm not in an interview is myself. But could they really, possibly imagine that I would sit at work shaking and sweating with a twitching eye all day every day? And didn't the guy down the hall with the twitching eye who collects his own hair and fingernail clippings in jars on the shelf at the back of his office come off as a real charmer when he had his interview 27 years ago? You bet he did, and that's why they're so nervous about hiring people now.

I Hope It Rains And You Lose

2007-04-24T18:56:00.000-05:00

I may be dropping Spanish. There are, you see, eight Tuesdays of class, five of which are cursed with home games.

Now, I know driving to Kenmore Square where my class is on a night when the Red Sox have a game a couple of blocks away is going to be a pain in the ass. I anticipate unholy hordes of drunks piling into and out of their cars for miles around. But I expect that to mainly take place NEAR GAME TIME, not so much two hours beforehand. And so it was that I came to drive very slowly for TWO HOURS in a train of aforementioned drunkenly weaving hordes desperately searching for a parking space, as far away as a 45 minute walk away from where I was going at 5pm tonight. I did not find a parking space. Not ever. To pass the time, I composed a modest proposal whereby everyone wishing to drive to a Red Sox game who doesn't live more than an hour away by car would be taxed, preferably in the form of having to kill one of their loved ones for the privilege (and I mean personally - no hired guns or arranged "accidents" - something really hands on.) I believe they have a similar system in London.

And lo! I see I am not alone - I was just trying to look up the London system, but this is even better. Now excuse me, I've got to go lobby for this to pass. In the suburbs. The far, outlying suburbs, too far away for even the drunkest idiots to park and try to walk to the game from. And I bet when I get there they'll still be there, parking in front of a fire hydrant and stumbling south, towards Fenway, which is deceptively visible from very, very far away.

Third Time's A Charm, Right?

2007-04-19T17:25:00.000-05:00

I've got an interview with the state Department of Revenue this Thursday. They called this morning and I didn't call them back immediately because I didn't even realize who was calling me. I've been applying to a ton of random non-lawyer stuff, and I had applied to two jobs at DOR that are similar to what I'm doing at the IRS, so I thought it was for that. I was totally freaking out when I realized who it was and what it was for (and how much more it would pay - almost $20k - yeesh!)

So if anyone is still out there, cross your fingers for me next Thursday at 4.

I've Got Nothing

2007-04-10T08:26:00.000-05:00

Things have been pretty busy up at Ye Olde IRS, as you might expect. I got certified to work by myself last Friday, which means I can work overtime now - sweet, sweet overtime, where I net more than double my normal hourly rate. I've been home sick for the last two days, but I'm pretty sure I can still work overtime, because it kicks in if you work more than 8 hours in one day. Awesome.

I also got a commemorative pin for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence or something like that for having lots of perfect reviews. I get to wear it on my id badge neck strap and make everyone else jealous. I thought I had skin cancer or some kind of hideous fungus or something for a week last week until I realized that it was just the neck strap wearing away my skin. I bought it at my law school's bookstore too, so selling me razor sharp ribbons to wear around my neck is just one more thing they're doing to look out for me after graduation. Thanks guys!!! It was probably manufactured by unemployed law students they locked in a dungeon to make them go away. And that boosts the numbers too, since technically slavery is a form of employment.

I've been semi-productive with my job applications for the last few days. I just found something that sounds very similar to my current job, but with the state. The major difference is that it pays $11,000 more to start. Is that not completely ridiculous? I want $11,000. Think of all the shoes I could buy! Not to mention the purses. It's still not an attorney position, but I've pretty much given up on ever getting one of those.

Free File This, Biatch

2007-03-17T17:06:00.000-05:00

I realize that, as lawyers, you are probably severely anal about your finances and already filed your taxes, received your refund, carefully researched the investment options, and tucked your refund away for retirement where it is earning 25% per year and you'll be able to retire on the interest alone by the time you're 35.

However, if you have not filed yet and you were thinking about either using H&R Block or buying TurboTax or something, you should know that a) H&R Block sucks total ass and I find more errors on returns they prepared than on the returns that are scrawled in crayon and covered with marijuana ash and sticky cookie crumb fingerprints and b) if you make less than $52,000 you can use TurboTax (and loads of other programs) for free through IRS Free File.

I think about work all the time, including when I am asleep, and I like getting things for free, so I thought I would share.

Things I Do When I'm Not Working

2007-03-15T18:11:00.000-05:00

To escape from having to work on the house (and I mean sawing, lifting, nailing, sweating - not vacuuming, dusting, and other normal house activities) I decided back in October to take up some scheduled activities. I started playing my horn again in a community orchestra, I started taking Spanish classes, and during tax seasons I prepare returns for poor people (who, frankly, all make more than I do, which tends to dampen my warm fuzzy community service feeling.)

That was all great while I was unemployed, or worse still, when I was trying to be a real estate agent and did less than nothing all day. But now that I slave away for eight and a half hours a day, nearly half of which are pre-dawn, or might as well be, I've been kind of resenting having to come home and then leave again right away almost every day.

I know the alternative would be hauling boards and bags of trash up and down the stairs - clearly much more horrible - but I only know that in a vague theoretical way. My brain insists that if I quit band, I would get to come home from work, put on a sweatsuit, eat bonbons, and watch trashy tv.

Actually, now that I think of it, that's essentially what my job is like, except we can only watch tv on breaks and at lunch. (Today at lunch, for instance, we watched a "news" story captioned "Surpise...porn!") People seriously come in to work every day looking like they're wearing their pjs (or worse) and god knows we all consume our own weight in communal candy every week. It's your basic ideal situation.

Maybe what I actually want is to be at work all the time. Yes, that's right, I want to live at work. At work, I get free candy, subsidized meals that I don't have to cook myself, and endless supply of trashy gossip in the form of people's nasty-divorce-filled tax returns, free heat & hot water, someone else to clean the bathrooms, high security, and no responsibilities beyond the basic moral code, and even that is flexible. I don't even have a phone or internet access, so I'm completely unreachable to creditors, family, and the rest of the worst of humanity while I'm there. Plus after 8 hours you're on overtime, so I'd be raking in the cash.

Sick dream, non?

Down With Daylight Savings

2007-03-12T20:06:00.000-05:00

I find it severely unfair that I had to get up at 4:45am this morning. And don't tell me that it was really 5:45 just because Congress decreed it so. It was 4:45, and I was so tired I thought I might vomit all morning. I spent the morning rounding down instead of rounding up in retaliation. Oh ok, not really, but I certainly fantasized about it. I'm going to bed at 9:30. I can't wait.

I got a voicemail from the Worthless HR Bitch this afternoon confirming that they have in fact revoked their offer back down to it's crappy original form. So no, WHRB, I am not still interested, but thanks so very much for all your gracious assistance. I'll just assume that blogging my answer is sufficient to inform them that I'm declining until I hear otherwise.

Their stupid crappy job does pay like $3000 more a year, but I think it's more worth it to stay at the IRS since if I ever were to get a law job, by some miracle, I would want to do tax law. I found a listing for a more interesting IRS job this morning too, so maybe that will turn into something.

My poor, innocent tv is trapped in the attic, which we can't get to because we're having the second floor floors finished this week. We gave serious consideration to setting up a ladder so we could climb through the third story windows to watch tv, but since we're in the suburbs now I was afraid the neighbors might call the cops or organize a petition against us or whatever angry suburban people do when they're not watching tv. We're listening to some cheerful thing about suicide on NPR right now. I miss my tv.

You Can't Make This Shit Up

2007-03-05T21:33:00.000-05:00

So the gist of what's been going on is this:

DHS offered me a job about two months ago that sounded crappy and paid about the same as what I'm making now

I expressed disinterest in their crappy job at the rate they were offering

Last week they came back and offered me $5,000 more/year ($8k more than what I'm making now)

I immediately accepted the job

They revoked their offer in a voicemail in the middle of the night

I had my IRS union rep call the woman back

They reinstated their original offer with the low pay; the job still sounds crappy

I asked them to reinstate their second offer and explain what the problem was

The nasty woman from HR who left the voicemail sent me a series of emails suggesting that I find someone else to answer my HR-related questions

I contacted her supervisor this morning to determine to whom I should then be addressing my HR questions

The supervisor answered my questions

The nasty HR woman then emailed me answering the same questions

I just emailed the nasty HR woman suggesting that she not contact me again until she has new information to relay

And there we are.

Shh, I'm In Hiding

2007-02-24T22:19:00.000-05:00

Ok ok I hear you. Let me gather my thoughts and I'll post something witty and earth-shakingly important tomorrow. Or, like, you know, I'll just bitch and whine about job stuff like usual...

Stupid Blogger made me convert to New Blogger. I loathe change. In the conversion process, they determined that I was born in 1756. Maybe that's why I'm so tired.

Shock

2007-02-08T16:59:00.000-05:00

How can Anna Nicole Smith be dead?? I'm so not prepared for this. I'm going to go lie down.

Totally Excellent

2007-02-06T21:14:00.000-05:00

I'm living the dream and going to bed at 9:30 tonight. I'm so excited. My day sucked. I spent the afternoon trying to return our "custom" skylight blinds, which I did not succeed in doing, nor did I achieve my goal of trying to complete the transaction without referring to them as "cheap tacky crap." I did, however, leave the store without the blinds, so I believe the you-touched-them-last theory of Property now applies. This is exactly what I pictured grown-up life would be like when I was a kid. Down to the last glamorous detail. Woooo!!! Party on!!!!!

Estoy Cansada

2007-02-05T21:16:00.000-05:00

You know what's hard? Blogging when you're working full time and in the process of moving. Yessiree Bob.

Since I'm sure you're all dying to know what I'm doing, I'll give you a weensy little update.

I have still, STILL, not heard anything back from those putzes at DHS. I'm sure the people doing the hiring are just as thrilled with their crappy HR department as I am, considering they told me in the interview how desperate they were to get someone in and working asap. They can certainly go ahead and shove their crappy job, but how am I supposed to convey that to them when they won't get back to me by any perceptible means of communication? (I haven't ruled out that they may be attempting to communicate with me telepathically, or possibly via resonating crystals, since they are based out of California and all.)

One of my career services ladies actually talked about me to some partner looking to hire a tax associate. He wants me to call him, apparently. I thought I would forward my resume first, so I did that today, and I guess I'll be calling him on Wednesday so he has a chance to get it and all. This would be exciting, except that it would be a hellish hour and half commute each way to the middle of nowhere, where they're festively located. I don't really even want to go out there for an interview, since it would most likely end up being a huge waste of my time anyway and I'd have to miss work to do it. Also I have the feeling that they'd be offering me absolutely nothing in the way of money, since it's a three person firm. So I'm dreading calling, because I don't want to go way the hell out there for nothing and I've got to find some way to ask about the salary without actually asking because we're supposed to pretend like we're looking for jobs for purely altruistic reasons until we have an offer. But there's no way in hell I'm taking half a day off from work and driving halfway to Canada for less than a decent chance at $48k. That's my minimum number to deal with the Commute From Hell, I've decided. Any tactfully worded suggestions for how to approach this would be appreciated.

I guess I've decided what I really want to do is stay at the IRS, but try to get into a better position. There's a lot of stuff about it that I like a lot, like all the benefits, and the people, and the quality of life in general. I've got to put in a few months doing what I was hired for before I can start applying for internal vacancies, but then I'm going to try to become a Tax Law Specialist which I think would be a better use of my stupid worthless law degree.

In other news, we partially moved into our house two weeks ago this Wednesday. We're living in the (finished) attic, and the kitchen and bathroom are done enough to deal with for now. It's sooooo much quieter and warmer than the apartment. Plus I can get to work in just 20 minutes instead of 45, if I go 85 the whole way, which I do so enjoy. Our blinds came in this afternoon, which is very exciting, because it turns out we have two street lights shining conveniently one through each window that have been tormenting us for the past two weeks. We had this construction paper stuff taped up, but it kept falling off and onto me in the middle of the night, much to my displeasure. So hooray blinds, hooray house, and boooooo hisssss to the street lights.

The Flight, Mrs. Mackey & The Goat

2007-01-29T17:30:00.000-05:00

I went to a bachelorette party in Chicago this weekend. It was attended mainly by unemployed graduates of my law school. While I can't say that made me feel better, it was certainly more comforting than if they had all been employed but me. It wasn't super wild because we're all poor and depressed (except the bride, who seemed to have a great time, which is the whole point) but it was ok. I promissed to set this one girl up with this Harvard guy I briefly dated who's working at some BigFirm out there now. Because.... I apparently thought I was still in touch with him... I guess. Who knows. I thought they would be perfect together at the time though. She's unemployed and he's rich, and she's independent and he would obviously never be home. Perfecto.

The plane ride out there was the most miserable one day or less experience of my life. I'd had a touch of the sniffles for a couple of days, so I pumped myself full of nasal spray before I got on the plane just in case, although I'd never had a problem before. But now I have. Oh my yes. It started with a stabbing pain in my front left sinus, then both my ears simultaneously stuffed themselves shut with something most foul. I couldn't pop them at ALL. So for two hours I frantically opened my mouth as wide as can be and desperately tried to clear them out, with limited success. Then we started our hour-long descent into Atlanta (thanks AirTran, for sending me three hours out of my way!!!) That's when it occured to me that I was going to be deaf forever and I started crying. Eventually we landed and my right ear mostly opened up, but not my left.

I bought decongestants. I used more nasal spray. I relunctantly got on another plane bound for Chicago. When we started to descend this time, the pain was UNBEARABLE. I felt like I was being stabbed in both ears, up under the base of my skull, and down both arms. I started crying and called the stewardess, who said their was nothing she could, but that we would probably be on the ground within 45 minutes, and that it would probably "get worse." Awesome! So I spent those 45 minutes sobbing hysterically and yanking on my ears, while my fellow passengers looked on nervously and whispered about me. Although I was 100% completely deaf at that point, so I'm not sure whether they thought I was a terrorist or an escaped mental patient. I was honestly completely deaf, to the point where I couldn't even hear those xxxtra loud announcements they always make about your tray tables and whatnot when you're about to land. Mis-er-a-ble. And they're not even completely better yet. They hurt when I lie down and I still can't hear everything.

I could, however, hear the instructor we had today in training, who kept saying Mmmkay - I swear to God, and she even sounded just exactly like Mr. Mackey. If she hadn't bored me to absolute desperation, I would have peed myself laughing. She went soooooooo sloooooow over everything, and then went back over everything, and we had her for four hours, right after lunch. I was like thisclose to chewing my own arm off to escape. I'm not sure how that would have helped, but my deepest most primordial animal brain had taken over at that point, and it was insisting that chewing off my arm was the way to go.

I haven't heard a thing from Homeland "What Did We Spend It On? Certainly Not Your" Security, and I sent two emails last week asking what was going on, so I finally called today when I knew that post-dumb bitch would be out and asked to speak to her supervisor to find out what was going on. Apparently they faxed something or other to the Boston office to see if they would be willing to start me at a Grade 6, but at something higher than Step One. I don't even know why I'm pursuing this, but it just shaves my goat to think that they might offer the job to someone else before I have a chance to reject it, which I what I suspected was going on. And shaved goats are the angriest kind.

Homeland $ecurity Is Cheap As Hell

2007-01-23T21:19:00.000-05:00

Based on my interview last Thursday, and the evidence previously gathered from the Exploding Car Tire Interview, I would say I'm pretty well obviously cursed in my job search.

On my way out the door Thursday morning, late already, I managed to lock myself out of my apartment and car. I did have my cell phone, but I did not have the piece of paper with the directions, name, and phone number of the person who was supposed to interview me. My landlady was on vacation, so I had to make Boyfriend come rescue me after I determined that I couldn't break down my front door like they do in the movies (see Exhibit A - huge disgusting painful bruise on hip and upper thigh), nor could I get in through the fire escape through the storm window, screen, and locked window, although I did briefly consider smashing through them all with a flower pot.

I eventually got back inside and called them 45 minutes after I was supposed to have been there. We rescheduled for 11. I arrived early at the building just in time for some sort of security lock down, which shut down the security screening point and the elevators and generally prevented me from getting past the lobby until I was 15 minutes late. Fantabulous I tell you.

At the interview itself, I found that rather than the paralegal position the HR department had described, they were hiring for something more along the lines of a... how do you say... not file clerk, because that sounds too important... they were basically looking for someone to pick up each piece of paper in Stack A and move it to Stack B for eight hours a day, but, like, totally worse. I was horrified. They made me admit to being a licensed attorney. I was ashamed. I gave one word answers to their remaining questions and got the hell out of there.

The thing that bothered me the most was that they might offer me the job. How on earth would I be able to choose between repetitive, menial drudgery (current job) and an $8,000 raise to perform, quite possibly, the worst job on earth (well, aside from ones that require one to gut things, although I did think about this for a while, and I do think it would still be worse than gutting, say, salmon, but still not as bad as maybe pigs and cows.)

Then, today, to my horror, HR called to offer me the job. And they offered it to me at a GS 6, which is one grade lower than what they had previously said I qualified for, which means it pays practically the same as what I'm doing now. Hmm... wretched job soul-suckingly comparable to wringing chicken necks knee deep in blood vs. job I already have that's comparatively not so bad. I think I'll pass on the figurative factory farming thanks. But I repressed my urge to laugh bitterly at the HR woman (who, btw, was dumb as a post - she honestly believed she had talked to me the night before because her clearly erroneous notes said she had - I had to tell her three times that she hadn't before she sort of believed me and told me why she was calling.) No, instead I said sure I was still interested, adn asked why I couldn't have my GS 7.

And so they are looking into it. She emailed to request that I fax my current yearly salary information. I wrote back that I don't have a salary since I'm essentially unemployed and have never really been employed before. I should have just said I wasn't interested right away. I cannot properly express to you how insulted I am that these cheap bastards are trying to offer me $3,500 less than they already told me I was worth for to demean myself in an office full of attorneys with real attorney jobs. This is a yuckity mess, my dears, from which I long to extricate myself most expeditiously.

Already Spent

2007-01-16T20:23:00.000-05:00

Oh I also got my check from BarBri today. I'm converting that $125 directly into the Bar Dues I feel I shouldn't be forced to pay since I can't get a goddamn job in the field. And it doesn't even quite cover it. Yeah baby.

I <3 The Sixteenth Amendment

2007-01-16T20:06:00.000-05:00

I have so much to tell you my dears, but I am so completely, utterly exhausted. I started my IRS job today. My drive took 45 minutes, and I was going about 75 virtually the entire way because it was 6am. We have got to hurry up and move in the next six weeks before I have to start getting there at 9:30, because my commute would double, and that would be entirely unacceptable.

Here are some of the things I retained from my 8 hours of orientation:

They have their own set of secret police, with guns and everything
During Prohibition, the IRS was apparently the big anti-liquor enforcement agency
We have to back our cars in to our parking spaces to cut down on how many children we might potentially run over
Paper clips, rubber bands, and office chairs can, and in fact are very likely to kill us.
We can't spend our break time looking up how much our exes and/or celebrities made last year or we will get fired
When we are drinking and driving and get pulled over, we are not supposed to threaten to audit the cop to get out of the ticket because we can get fired for it, despite the fact that they then spent an inordinate amount of time telling anecdotes about just how effective a strategy it is
Without ever mentioning it, they passed out half a photocopied newspaper article about a guy in San Diego who shot a bunch of people at his office
You can eat lunch for $3.05 in the employee cafeteria
Treasury employees are unionized

It's a lot more like working in a factory that I envisioned. The union people scared me to death. They demand $25 a month. That seems like an awful lot, considering what we're getting paid. It also sounded like the only real reason people join is peer pressure, since you don't get any particular additional benefit from being a member.

My favorite part was when the woman kept admonishing us to pahhhk our cahhhhs backwards. She must have said it twenty times.

Today's News

2007-01-10T22:00:00.000-05:00

I just found out that the stupid crappy paralegal job would start me at Grade 7 - this is exciting since the IRS has me at a 5. That's the difference between $14.85 and $18.40 an hour. It's also more than several lawyer jobs I've interviewed (and apparently not been qualified) for. Of course, as I have alluded to previously, I would be doing something fairly morally reprehensible. But it would be such a much easier commute. So now I'm slightly less annoyed that I have to miss half a day of paid training to go.

Tomorrow, speaking of things that are morally reprehensible, I have to go to the DMV to get a new driver's license and register my car in this stupid state. I'm taking a few hours off from my awful temp job and going in the morning in the hopes that the illiterate degenerates won't have had time to line up in front of me. So hopefully it'll just be me and the other unemployed uberlosers. The only catch is that I can't find my title. Do you think they'll just take it for granted that I own my car? Yeah, me neither. Luckily the dear, sweet state of Maryland, which I wish I could keep my cute little license plates from forever, will let me print a new one right off the internet. For a fee though. Stupid fees I can't afford! I shake my fist at you!!!

I just found out my next Spanish class is going to be just me and one other person. What do you think the chances are that this person is smart and cool and not some kind of nervous twitching super freak? Pretty slim I'd say. I got a voicemail from the school today and it sounds like they're condensing the class to 2 hours down from 3, which is kind of nice on the one hand, and kind of makes me feel like they're screwing me out of my money on the other. I've got to hurry up and get motivated to study before next Wednesday. I want to be the smart one going in.

Nanny Nanny Boo Boo

2007-01-09T21:46:00.000-05:00

They can string me along. They can demean me. They can force me to work for nothing. But they can't keep me away from the tax code!

Oh yes, I'm going to be an Assistant Manager at my low-income tax center this year. Take that you nasty evil lawyers who won't hire me. I'm adding another line to my resume despite your best efforts. So pthhhhhhhhhhh :-P

My Weekends Suck, II

2007-01-07T19:30:00.000-05:00

This weekend we put in the hardwood flooring in the attic. It took 16 hours. And I'm working with an expert. My job was to crouch on the floor over a chop saw and cut both ends off of about 4000 pieces of old, dirty, dusty, stanky wood. Some of them had 50 year old animal pee on them too, which added to the fun considerably. I'm horribly allergic to dust, and I'm also sick, so I spent about 50% of the time trying to stop the flow of snot, which was black with the aforementioned hideous dirty old wood shavings (sorry I had to tell you that, but I felt you should know) and 50% of the time trying not to chop off a finger, put out an eye, or leap out the window to end the monotonous drudgery. I cannot WAIT to get back to sorting checks at work tomorrow. At least I get to sit in a chair half the time at work. I hate manual labor. Hate!!!

On Friday I got a call from someone at the IRS about some other job I applied for there. As near as I can piece together, it's salaried, temporary, and in Boston. I've got to call on Monday to see what they want. I also scheduled my interview for that paralegal thing. Instead of doing interviews this week, which would have been overwhelmingly convenient since I'm temping right next door, they're doing interviews next week, when I'll be about an hour away from Boston by car. Not that you can reasonably drive a car into Boston, mind you, since people here can't seem to operate a car and their brain at the same time. The parking is also outrageously expensive near where I have to go. And, oh yes, the best part is that I'm going to have to miss a whole half day of my brand new other IRS job during my first week of training, because they only want to schedule interviews smack in the middle of the day (which I presume is inconvenient for everyone, not just me). When they told me the times I could pick from, I almost just told them to forget it, cause it's going to be so freaking inconvenient, it's not even a REAL job still, and I have suspicions that they don't realize I'm an attorney and wouldn't even consider hiring me if they knew. I still might cancel it. Someone tell me what to do. I apparently only make crappy job search decisions.

No Law For Me

2007-01-04T19:17:00.000-05:00

I wrote to the state tax people to see where they are in their process. They wrote back to say that the other two people are their first two choices because they both have SIX OR MORE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE! What the fuck are these people doing stealing my entry level job from me??? Shouldn't they be off making partner somewhere??? This is so completely unfair.

And I'm going to have an interview with this other place for their paralegal position and they're going to be like "So why are you applying for this job? Don't you want to practice?" and I'm going to burst into tears because I DO WANT TO I JUST CAN'T BECAUSE NO ONE WILL LET ME! /sob/

Although that's not entirely acurate - what I really want is to go back in time and convince my past self to just go ahead and apply to the same awful, shitty jobs I'm applying to now, because at least then I would only be suffering the indignity of tearing out staples for 9 hours with a college degree, instead of with a law degree and $100k+ of fucking debt. Of course, past me wouldn't GET any of those jobs, because she would be underqualified compared to all the vastly, disgustingly overqualified people, like future me, who are stuck applying to the same shit because they can't get jobs in their field.

I haven't paid my bar dues yet. I think it's completely unfair that I should have to. On my way home tonight some asshole was screaming at me on the street to smile. I don't think I should have to walk around smiling right now either.

Sick & Tired

2007-01-04T07:36:00.000-05:00

I've got a new temp assignment - the most menial to date! I'm in the accounting department of some kind of investment bank that's about to have its year-end audit done. They need someone to go to their monstrous file room, pull checks, take out the staples, photocopy them, staple them back up and refile them for 8 1/2 hours a day until its done. I told them I was an attorney right off the bat so they'd be a little more respectful than the people at the last place. They were horrified that the temp agency sent me to them. They must have apologized 15 times yesterday for how boring what I was doing must have been to me. Awesome.

In real estate land, Craigslist decided to be totally evil and administratively delete all my listings. This does not please me. They did the same thing to another guy at my office. I sent them an Esquire email to see what happened. You know...

Dear Blah,

What's up?

Love, X, Esq.

P.S. Esq. means I could sue you, so answer up quick, bitch.

I doublechecked all my ads and there's nothing illegal about them, so they'd better offer up a groveling apology, stat. Somehow though, I doubt that's going to happen.

So I've been applying to basically anything that sounds like it would be something I could do in state & federal government. I got an email yesterday offering me an interview for what sounds like a paralegal job at a Federal agency (I can't say which agency this time because it's embarassing - it's one of the evil ones.) It's year-round and one grade higher than the IRS thing, although it's something I'm less interested in (and maybe a little bit morally opposed to.) So we'll see how that goes.

Ugh. God. I don't want to go to work. This assignment sucks so very, very much. Plus I've got some kind of awful cold/throat thing. And I have to ride the filthy, dirty train. And my "comfy" shoes pinched my toes all day yesterday so now all my shoes hurt. Whine whine whine! Whine!!!

Horror On The 13th Floor

2007-01-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

It's been two weeks now since my 3rd interview with the state Dept of Revenue. I haven't heard from them. My puny earthling brain keeps insisting that it's the holidays and it's the government, so it's reasonable that I haven't heard back yet. But my higher consciousness off on Nematode 5 knows that it's because they already hired someone else AGAIN and just don't have the common decency to tell me AGAIN.

Now don't ask me to explain why I would ever attempt to involve these people in my lives still, but I had also written to career services (which I know causes you all to scream Agh! No! Don't Go In There!!! all horror-movie style - and yes, they are actually located on the 13th floor, nice touch, non?) to ask for help in letting the state folks know that the Feds were interested to help them make the right decision and just hire me. I sent it to the general question email address they have in hopes of getting a faster reply. One of the ladies who used to work with me, back before I graduated without a job and became a total pariah that they normally try to pawn off on the part-time lady who sucks the most, wrote back right away and was like "Oh that's great! Call me and we'll talk about this!" Well you know...if I were in a position to be making phone calls during the day that would be great, but I wasn't because I was temping. I tried at lunch though, twice, and couldn't get ahold of her. Then I got an email from her on the 22nd saying "We're off for Christmas now for the next two freaking weeks but I'll try to call you from home." Yeah right. So that never happened obviously. So I'm sure by now I totally missed my chance to try to leverage this thing to my advantage since they probably made their decision within the first few days.

Thanks again CDO!!!

My Weekends Suck

2006-12-30T09:54:00.000-05:00

I guess people really do rent for September 1st in January. I just got an email from five girls who want to look at 5-bed places next week. Come onnnnn big commission!

Speaking of commissions, I finally, finally, finished my deal with that other girl on Wednesday. But I can't get my check, because the broker had a death in the family and disappeared for who knows how long. I've never actually met the broker, so that's not quite as heartless as it sounds.

I get to spend my weekend installing baseboard and window casing in the attic and measuring for countertops. The measuring part totally sucks, but the countertops themselves are pretty exciting. We're getting real granite and marble for the kitchen/baths since our cabinets and appliances fell off the back of a truck out in Jersey which really helped cut costs. For the kitchen we're getting Blue Pearl, for the downstairs bath Ming Green, and for the upstairs bath it's White Naxos I'm most excited about the Blue Pearl since I had to wage a six-month subliminal message campaign to get it.

In lawyer news, Boyfriend's mother wants me to sue this contractor that totally screwed her over. I'm hoping he'll just show back up and finish the work after the first threatening letter (which I have yet to write) cause there's no way I can go to court by myself. It's not even small claims cause it's like $10,000, so it would be For Real Court. Eek.

Did anyone else get hit up for legal advice over the holidays? People like to ask me things I couldn't possibly know off the top of my head, like "How long do I have to keep cancelled checks?" and "What's the basis for the stock your grandmother left me that she bought in 1920 when it was the Northeastern Telegraph Company because telephones didn't exist yet and then became Bell which split off into the baby bells then eventually evolved into Verizon?" I was like ummm...these sound like questions for your accountant. Lawyers spot issues, we don't know practical things.

Cashmere Lip Perfection

2006-12-29T12:52:00.000-05:00

I've been going over the numbers, and it looks like when I start my full-time job in two weeks (so soon!) I will not be making enough to live on. For instance, I can pay my rent and pay my student loans, but not eat. Or, I could eat and pay my loans, but get evicted and have to live in my car. However, even if I did live in my car, I would not be able to afford to buy gas to drive it to work, so I would lose my job and freeze to death on the side of the road, and they would find me huddled under my diploma for warmth, clutching my tiny Supreme Court souvenir gavel in one hand and the 2006 Tax Code in the other.

I have tried to talk to Boyfriend and my family about this, but they keep saying, essentially, "Oh, don't worry, you can still do the real estate thing on the side." Which is true, except that they seem to all be overlooking the small fact that I CAN'T SEEM TO MAKE ANY MONEY DOING REAL ESTATE. So, if I were looking for, say, a way to while away the idle hours while I wait to be frozen to death in my car, real estate would be a fine hobby, but as a money-making venture, I believe I already have two months' worth of proof that it sucks quite thoroughly.

So this has been taking some of the fun out of the whole Yippee I'm Starting A New Job thing. It barely makes me chuckle with glee to look over my vision benefits anymore.

But, on the bright side, my lip gloss matches my sweater perfectly. That, I can only assume, is why I'm making $1/hour more than the last temp they had here.

Yet Another Interview (or: I Kill You Now!!!)

2006-12-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

And so it came to pass that last Wednesday, when I went to my interview to be a bank auditor, this bitch in an SUV ran me off the road in the parking garage, whereupon I ran into a curb and my tire exploded. 15 minutes before my interview. Isn't that hot? I thought it was.

So I had to pull into one of the Park Here And Die!!! reserved spaces because you can't drive on no tire. I went downstairs and explained to the woman what had happened. The woman told me they were going to tow my car. I explained what happened again. The woman told me to move my car because they were going to tow my car.

I went outside and called Boyfriend and starting crying hysterically on the phone. There was a man on the sidewalk. He turned out to be the owner of all the buildings on the street, including the parking garage. He explained to the awful woman what happened. The awful woman was suddenly very polite and helpful and assured him that of course my car would not be towed. Such a miraculous transformation at this time of year must be the work of the Baby Jesus.

I then proceeded to my interview, which, I must point out, I made it to EXACTLY on time. But obviously the interview sucked because I was distracted and I kept blinking like I had some kind of disorder because crying dries out my contacts really bad. Plus it was a two vs. one interview, which is never fun to begin with. I was so not into it that I immediately forgot the name of the second woman upon entering the elevator, so I haven't sent my thank you notes because I thought it would be awkward to thank one lady but not the other, and now it's probably too late in any case. Fabulous.

Then, for dessert, I got to pay $100 for a new tire, when I had just paid $100 for two new tires two months ago, one of which was the one that exploded. Although I did get to have my tire installed at the place I think they must use as the set for every chop shop scene in every movie about car thieves, which is somewhere in East or possibly South Boston, if you're interested. So that was nice. And by "nice" I mean "aggghhh!!!"

To prevent future such occurrences, I'm having one of those tank guns installed on top of my little car and the next SUV that makes me feel the least bit nervous is getting totally fucking vaporized.

Not Dead Yet

2006-12-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

Sorry I disappeared. I must tell you about my interviews, my flat tire, and my further adventures in real estate, among other things. Not today, but soon. Today, I flew, and I therefore need a drink, NOW. Or two. Or four. Aw hell...bring me a straw and the handle of vodka. It was a discount airline.

The Power Of The Purse

2006-12-13T07:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I rescheduled my plans with my friend V with the magic job luck purse to go out on Wednesday night instead since Monday didn't work out. Then, last night, I got a phone call from the state Tax Man, who I haven't heard from since the beginning of SEPTEMBER when I had my first and second interviews. They want me to come in for a third interview with the head of the bureau. Eeee!

The advantages of this job over the IRS job are as follows:
1) It pays about $30k more per year
2) It's an actual lawyer job

The disadvantages are:
1) It's litigation
2) That is all

Never doubt the power of the purse. I haven't even touched it yet, and already it's working for me. It also found me a temp job for just today - the day I'm going to see it.

Keep rubbing, y'all. I'll bring more luck back tonight.

Doing My To Do's

2006-12-11T12:28:00.000-05:00

I've been doing my Christmas cards all weekend. I love that Martha Stewart feeling of superiority you get when you've tracked down the address, stuffed the card in the envelope, and put the stamp on. Especially if you get your cards in the mail before you receive any.

I desperately need to take my Bar Bri books back this week. I've been carting them around in my trunk in a little mini suitcase since the day I found out I passed at the beginning of November. But I keep not going. It's just such a pain in the ass to park downtown. Yuck. Maybe tomorrow. I wish I'd done it earlier. I could really use the money since I haven't gotten paid since, oh, what now, the first week of November?

I've got zero interest in this real estate crap now. I didn't go in all weekend and I'm still not in and it's 12:30 (although, to be fair, I've never been in before noon.) But I'm supposed to be writing up the stupid lease for the stupid girl's stupid apartment. I don't see why I should rush though. She's obviously going to wait until the last possible second to get in her deposits and earn me my commission. Ugh.

Plus I'm starting to get nervous about telling my manager I'm leaving. The plan is to tell him I need to cut back to part-time, but in reality, part-time will mean I'm never in the office, ever, and given my current level of enthusiasm, will essentially just mean I'm quitting.

Monday is supposed to be my gym day but I so don't feel like it. I never do on Monday. Even when I'm barely doing anything else and the days all blend together, my body can still tell it's Monday, and it doesn't want to move. Stupid lazy body.

Yawn

2006-12-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

I rented my first apartment on Friday night, but it was totally anticlimactic because the girl was supposed to rent it last Saturday, and then again on Wednesday, so now I'm just totally sick of her and wish she'd go away. Also I don't get paid until she gets all her money in, which probably won't be till the last week of December. And the landlord hasn't actually called to confirm that she's accepted yet, which is kind of strange. Hopefully there's nothing bad going on with that. Whatever. I'm so over this real estate thing. It's so November...

We had our holiday concert last night. There was one song with an awesome horn section solo and we totally nailed it. Anyway, everyone said we sounded great, which I'm sure we did to them since only other musicians can tell when you're majorly screwing things up. Then, after, I went out and got drunk with the old folks (average age of band - approx. 45.) Apparently, in the outlying towns, Chili's is the happening place to be on weekend nights, since it is the only place that stays open past ten, and one of only 2 places open past 6. Yeesh. It's freaky, especially since they're so close to Boston.

Today we're going to finish tiling the upstairs bathroom. Thank god. Tiling sucks ass. I can't wait till this stupid house is done. Yeah I know. Stifle your yawns. It's been a slow weekend after an eventful week. I've got an exciting post planned for tomorrow though about how much I'm going to love my government health insurance. Get up early to check for that...

Uncharacteristic Sapiness & Job Luck

2006-12-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

I love you guys. You're so relentlessly enthusiastic and optimistic (at least when it comes to other people's luck.) Big sappy internet hugs to all my posters, lurkers, casual readers, and the guy who got here accidentally while he was looking for weird japanese r0pe p0rn. Well... ok not to that last guy. He is welcome to a firm, platonic handshake though. Right after he washes his hands.

I may have mentioned before that my friend V got this monster pink Chanel purse from her apparently insanely wealthy boyfriend for their anniversary this year. She was looking for a job for a long time, then she got the purse, and she found a great new job where she's making about $15k more than her last one (she was getting seriously screwed.) I went out for drinks with her and rubbed the purse for luck. I found a job just a few weeks later. I am now offering you the chance to rub my blog for the residual monster pink Chanel purse job related luck that may be clinging to it even now. One rub to a customer please.

Shreiking With Glee

2006-12-06T14:33:00.000-05:00

Omigod omigod I got a job! I'm going to work for the IRS! Oh the unholy power I will weild! Muahahaha!

More later must go jump up and down and shreik with glee until the neighbors call the cops. Or actually both of my neighbors are cops, so I guess they'll just come up and club me.

Stress Yourself Thin

2006-12-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

Today is my weigh in day & I made it to my goal weight this week =) It's weird...I was stuck for three weeks and then this week I lost 5lbs all of a sudden.

AND - the best part - I tried on my skinny suit, which hasn't fit for two years so I've never actually worn it, and it fits! Yay! Almost as fun as buying something new. I do need some new shoes to wear with it though, since it's navy. Hmm... If I close this stupid deal tonight I might be heading over to Payless later to hunt for some faux crocodile. You can't beat two pairs of shoes for $20. Who cares if they disintegrate in water.

Actually no, the suit part is great, but the very best part is I see they're giving me 4 more points a day now. Thank god! I'm so freaking hungry!! Yay!

Operation ANIDWT - Day 1

2006-12-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

Ok. So. I didn't quite do what I was supposed to, but I at least did something.

I applied to a state government job to do something that sounds like audit banks, which is at least a little bit law-related (but who cares anyway - it's a government job /drool/.) And that application required like 15 different forms and a copy of my freaking credit report, which I just happened to have lying around, AND a trip to the post office.
I applied to H&R Block to be a tax season person.

So not lawyer jobs, but they would both be paying jobs at least. I couldn't bring myself to start the awful targeted mailing thing, and I'm really, really not feeling it today either. I can't decide if I should hold it to just 4/day, or make them build up so today I should do 8. I guess that would just terrorize me and make me not want to do it even more.

We'll see what I can get done today. It's already 11. Argh! Stupid time! Why do you fly! Why?!?

What are the great unemployed masses doing for Christmas/holiday presents this year? I'm a big present person, but I'm even poorer now than when I was a student. And I'm no longer liking my previous cookie idea.

Arrgggh! Noooo! I Don't Want To!!!!

2006-12-05T09:35:00.000-05:00

Question of the Day: If you are still looking for a job, what the heck is it you're doing???

In my pit of despair yesterday, I recalled a flyer I got in the mail from Legal Authority. They get no link, since they prey off the weak and downtrodden. I looked into their services. I was horrified to see that it would cost me about $3/firm to do a targeted mailing through them. Now, granted, I'm at the point where I can barely get out of bed in the morning, am boycotting washing my hair until I'm gainfully employed, and burst into tears whenever I think about applying for another job, which I believe puts me squarely in their target demographic, but I'll be damned if I'm paying any $3/firm.

And so, today, I commence Operation Arrgggh! Noooo! I Don't Want To!!!!

Operation ANIDWT Points of Action:

Search for jobs on the 7 main job sites I check. (1/2 hour)
Apply for 1 job found during search. (1/2 hour)
Identify 4 firms suitable for targeted mailing. (1/2 hour)
Prepare, print, and mail 4 letters to abovementioned firms begging for a job. (1/2 hour)

The Master Plan calls for all of this to happen before 11am every day. That, coupled with the fact that I'm tearing up just thinking about it, makes it very unlikely that this will work. But I'm going to try to force myself to do it this week.

Awful

2006-12-04T15:31:00.000-05:00

Oh god everything is so awful. It's so unfair. I just emailed the career services office again begging one of the ladies who used to be nice to me to help me, but I know she won't, because they don't care about us at all once we graduate. I'm about to run out of money completely this month and I don't know what I'm going to do. I waited too long and I can't get a bar study loan anymore. I can't even move back in with my parents cause I was so goddamn stupid and took the bar in a state where I don't know anyone. I mean not that it makes a fucking difference since I obviously won't ever get to be a lawyer here. But it hurts to have to leave and give up even the tiny little chance. I'd be better off buying lottery tickets than looking for jobs. I don't even see how I could give up and look for a normal person job cause if I leave law school on my resume they would never hire me and if I take it off how do I explain the three year hole? I just wish I were dead. I can't do this anymore.

Please no posts about cheering up from anyone who has a job.

So Close, And Yet, So Poor

2006-12-02T18:20:00.000-05:00

Argh! I almost just rented a place! I was even closer than last time! This girl brought her checkbook and was prepared to put down a deposit, but she couldn't do the whole first month's rent, which is what we require, so I had to send her away. Argh!!!

She is in love with a place I showed her though, and she made an appointment to come back on Wednesday when she gets paid, so hopefully this will go through.

Things That Must Happen So I Can Get Paid Instead Of Getting Evicted And Starving To Death:

The apartment must not get rented between now and Wednesday.
The girl must get paid as usual on Wednesday.
The girl must return to my office on Wednesday.
The girl must not have a change of heart between now and Wednesday.

I think she actually has to have all her deposits (first/last/security, etc.) in before I get paid, and I think it might take them a while after that to do the paperwork and write me a check. But I prefer to think of it as that I get paid the very instant she submits her application.

I've got another appointment tomorrow with a guy who told me up front that he's extremely picky. So I'm not particularly optimistic, but you never know what people will like.

Licensed to Sue

2006-11-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-28T08:23:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-27T09:28:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-23T22:14:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-22T09:33:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-21T12:11:00.000-05:00

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!!!

2006-11-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-16T09:20:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-14T08:16:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-13T08:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-07T08:43:00.000-05:00

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!!!

2006-11-02T22:46:00.000-05:00

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

Obsessively Thinking About Food

2006-11-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-01T11:27:00.000-05:00

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!!!

Things I'm Worrying About Today

2006-10-30T11:38:00.000-05:00

Today is the day I have to quit my temp job. I am scared. I'm technically only required to give 3 days notice, but I thought I'd be nice and give a week. The reasons I'm scared are as follows:

1. I have never quit a job before.
2. My boss is a screamer.
3. They might make me leave today instead of at the end of the week.
4. They might break down my will and make me stay forever.
5. I'm scared of the real estate thing, which is what I'm quitting to do.
6. I don't want to tell my boss that I'm quitting to do real estate because it seems like such a stupid thing to be doing when I say it out loud.

I guess I'll try to do it at 3. That seems like a good time.

I signed up for the real estate license exam this morning (on my cell, in my car, at 75mph - very exhilirating) and I'm taking it next Tuesday at noon. That gives me just over a week to figure out what's going to be tested and learn it. I'm hoping Barnes & Noble has some kind of book on that. I'll be buying it tonight, if it exists. Otherwise I'll be winging it.

I've started to feel sick about that OTHER exam. Not nearly as sick as I felt before I took it (for months upon months), but still, I've been experiencing some jaw clenching, tooth grinding, nausea, chills, and a general sense of Impending Doom.

Boyfriend and I set January 1st as the move-in date to our house. Notice I didn't say completion date. Oh no, we'll be attempting to finish just the first floor in the next two months. We'll be sleeping in the dining room, the front hall will become a makeshift closet, and everything else we own will be stacked to the ceiling in the living room and basement. But it will be so blissfully warm. Our boiler crapped out on us, so it's been about 50 degrees indoors for the last week, which doesn't really sound cold, but is. It's about 50 at my office too. Everyone here has space heaters except me, the lowly temp. I've been clutching little cups of crappy office coffee for warmth.

I'm starving and it's only 11:45. Stupid daylight savings!

Skinny, Depressed, and Worried

2006-10-27T13:44:00.000-05:00

My school has posted a total of 5 jobs in Massachusetts for recent grads in October. One is for someone with 2-5 years of experience, like every other law job on earth. One is actually for a secretary, not a lawyer. One is in the western part of the state, which is so far away it might as well be in New York. That leaves two jobs, both of which are doing civil litigation, which may well turn out to be personal injury. I have applied for both of them, expressing my enthusiasm for whatever general thing it is they do. This is so goddamn depressing. Like really, really depressing. Like why do I bother to get out of bed and wash my hair when I'm just going to have to do it tomorrow so now it's been 5 days and I'm so filthy it's scary depressing. But, you know, mostly only theoretically since I go to work every day. So far.

In diet news, I've lost 8 pounds, so just 5 more to go. That's actually 4 pounds less than I've weighed since maybe high school, with the exception of the few months after my accident when I could only consume liquids and the time I had mono, both of which are exceptional diet aids. WW wants me to lose 10% of my starting weight, which seems a little excessive. I haven't weighed that little since probably middle school, and back then I didn't have boobs or a brain engorged by 7 years of expensive education (although I did have Big Hair and Huge Glasses - thank you early 90s!) I can't decide if I cheated or not though. The day I decided to go on a diet I happened to get on a scale and was 4 pounds heavier than normal. I don't know if that was a fluke or if the standard had actually been raised. So maybe I've only lost 4 pounds.

I've got my Halloween party to go to on Saturday. That should be a good time, but I'm more excited to give out candy on Tuesday, since I haven't gotten to do that since... 1997. God that's a long time. I'm worried though that people won't come to our house cause it's under construction and we don't have a porch light. We'll also be there working with power tools between visits. I have a string of pumpkin lights and a garland of bats and ghosts. I guess I could also make some cotton ball ghosts and get a pumpkin. I must find a way to make it clear that I have a bucketload of candy to give away to anyone who pounds on the door! I got the mini peanut butter cups too, which as far as I'm concerned are the best possible candy to receive. I'm worried that the two bags I got won't be enough though. I like how I can be simultaneously worried about two contradictory possibilities. Is that what they mean by thinking like a lawyer?

Arts & Crafts for Unemployed Lawyers

2006-10-26T13:05:00.000-05:00

I think I dreamed I failed last night. I do not wish to discuss it further.

Now that I've got my Halloween costume squared away (going to be a zebra again - but with a new yarn tail! which I have yet to make, although I do have the yarn), is it to early to start thinking about Christmas? Clearly not, I suppose. I like to plan ahead in order to have as much of the perfect Martha-esque experience as possible.

I was thinking of making and/or baking something to send to Boyfriend's extended family this year, because last year, he wanted me to pick out actual presents for everyone (since he, as a male, was not born with a thoughtfulness gene), and yet, despite the fact that he's known these people his entire life, quite literally, he knew almost nothing about any of them. I got helpful tips like "Jimmy likes guns" and "Erica has two children, I think." We ended up sending out a lot of fruit baskets.

Now I think buying a tin of cookies is too impersonal for family, since you can go down to Costco and buy a gross of them in about 20 minutes, but I thought baking them (or something) might be ok. Has anyone ever done that successfully? Or received some that didn't make you think "Oh I see - she must be totally broke this year"?

Tune in tomorrow for another episode of Arts & Crafts for Unemployed Lawyers, where I'll try to decide whether the $70 cost of making 40 glitter-embossed holiday cards is excessive. Mostly I want the 600-degree heat gun. I haven't decide yet whether I'd use it for good, or for evil. Or have I }:)

Three Unrelated Thoughts

2006-10-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

(1) Coordinating the Holidays

Ok, so my new plan is to go home the week before Thanksgiving and for all of Christmas. I'll stay here for actual Thanksgiving and New Year's. I will try to muster the fortitude to choke down whatever horrors cross my plate on Thanksgiving day. Horrors, which, in the past, have included such things as charcoal figs. Not just charred, but complete lumps of charcoal, most suitable for barbeque use. I will also volunteer to cook many, many side dishes, unless I can convince them to just go out to eat instead, which would be vastly preferable.

(2) Repressed 3rd Grade Memories

On a completely unrelated note, I've had this horrible song stuck in my head all morning. It's something they taught us in elementary school about a cat who falls off a roof and dies. I remember it made me cry hysterically and they had to send me to the nurse. It goes something along the lines of:

He broke his tail and all his whiskers
Meow meow meow
And his little solar plexus
Meow meow meow

Is that not the most awful thing to want to teach children? Oh look I found it - thank you Internet, for once again proving that I wasn' t just hallucinating.

(3) Why You Should Drink Boxed Wine

I've got such a freaking headache. We split a bottle of Prosecco last night. Vile, vile Prosecco. It tasted like fizzy rubbing alcohol mixed with Sweet & Low. Ugh. I think I may vomit just recalling it. I was suprised - Costco usually sells decent wine. It was even worse than the stuff we had at some restaurant a couple weeks ago. The first clue that was going to suck was when the bottle arrived with a picture of lobsters in beach chairs on the front. The flavor progression went something like green apple - earwax - vanilla. At least it didn't end on the earwax, but still, I don't know that that's what one necessarily seeks out in a Chardonnay.

Definitely Not Hot

2006-10-24T14:55:00.002-05:00

How is it Tuesday already? And how can I be simultaneously upset that it's a whole day later than I thought, yet also upset that it's not 5pm yet?

My college reunion was good. It was freezing and pouring down rain though, so I think a lot of people might not have come because of that. Most people I went to school with are within driving distance of it still, so they get to make those kinds of last minute decisions, unlike those of us who have to buy our plane tickets months in advance. But a lot of people I wanted to see did show up. And they got fat. And bald. Which is all I could have ever hoped for }:)

What, Me Worry?

2006-10-24T14:55:00.000-05:00

I think I may be the only person on earth who's not completely freaking out about bar results. (Except, obviously, for the people who did not take the July bar exam, but they hardly matter at all.) That's probably because I don't really know when we find out. I know they said something about November, but I don't know if they mean November 1st on the nose, or Novemberish if we feel like it, or the day before Thanksgiving just because we can muahaha, or what.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I have no plans, because Boyfriend is being all weird about wanting to spend the holidays together. This sucks a lot, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I always go home, and we always have dinner with my whole family, and my mom is an awesome cook. Then the day after, we go shopping, which is also totally fabulous. Plus it's always a couple of days before or after my birthday.

Except this year, we are supposed to spend Thanksgiving "together," which will end up meaning actually with his family, which will involve going over to sit in a house with his family, who don't really care about me since we aren't married, who have no sense of tradition, and who can't cook in an 0migod-you-can't-be-serious-how-do-you-burn-water kind of way. If, IF!, we are even invited, because they can also get all weird and do things like cancel Christmas, which is what his Evil Stepmother did last year.

Yes, that's right, she disinvited her husband's children from her house at Christmas, because she wanted to spend it with only just her biological family. His father had to sneak off one afternoon and have Chinese food with them. This is total, complete bullshit.

Actually, I'm Vegetarian

2006-10-19T11:01:00.000-05:00

So I've been doing the Weight Watchers thing because my body seemed rather inclined to hold on to the extra flesh I acquired during my If-It's-Salty-I'll-Dip-It-In-Fat-And-Eat-It bar exam days, despite the fact that I no longer dine exclusively on Coke, Babybel cheese, and Chex mix.

I'm doing this online only because, frankly, I'm scared the bigger ladies might yell at me if I tried to go to a meeting, since I'm only trying to lose like 10lbs.

I noticed on the WW message boards that they have this saying - "nothing tastes as good as being thin feels." That's the biggest load of crap. I've been thinking about it, and I can think of about 100 things that taste better than being thin, including, but not limited to:

1. the totally awesome corn pudding I had two weeks ago
2. salty things when you have PMS
3. cashews
4. any food you didn't have to cook yourself on a weeknight
5. mayonnaise
6. Coke
7. pizza
8. pina coladas
9. cupcakes
10. kittens

Er..wait...scratch that last one. Although kittens do belong on my Things That Make Me Happy list, along with everything else I listed. And I'm sure they would taste fantastic lightly salted and dipped in mayonnaise. Mmm...kittens...

God can you tell it's lunch time?

Stressed & Hungry

2006-10-18T09:21:00.000-05:00

I have to talk to my temp boss today and I haaaayayayayate talking to bosses. I hate the powerlessness of the situation. They can decide to tell you yes or no and there's nothing you can do but quit and starve to death if you don't like their answer.

I just have to tell her that I need this Friday off, which I would have told her last Wednesday, except she made it sound like I wasn't going to be working here this week. Then yesterday she didn't mention till the end of the day that she wanted me back indefinitely. And then I felt bad mentioning that I need more time off cause I had just taken Monday off and I came in 2 hours late yesterday. I don't want to tell her why either and I know she's going to ask. I'm going to my 5 year college reunion. I need to leave early on Thursday too. Argh!

I don't know where this strange guilt comes from. It's not as though they have to pay me when I'm not here, and anyway it's not like they have more than maybe 2 days of work for me to do in a given week. But I still feel like I'm 2 years old and I've been coloring on the walls and I hear my parents come home and suddenly realize that I'm doing something bad.

I also have to email the real estate place I liked and tell them I want to work for them, but not until I at least have my license exam scheduled. They wanted me to quit my job asap and start getting trained. But I mean why on earth would I want to start working there until I can make some money doing it? So I'm not looking forward to writing that email either cause I know it's not what they want to hear. I guess I'm supposed to actually call them, but there's just no way that's going to happen.

God I just want to get to Iowa and get drunk. But even that is stressful cause I'm supposed to be on a diet, but like every meal out there is about 2000 calories by itself. I don't know if I should make an effort to eat nothing and be miserable the whole time or just say screw it and suck down bacon double cheeseburgers with thousand island dressing and onion rings on top (I know you know the one I mean) washed down with about 6 gallons of beer.

Adventures In Licensure

2006-10-17T10:59:00.001-05:00

I had and interview for a real estate job with The Biggest Jerk On The Face Of The Earth on Friday night. He spent over 2 hours (on Friday night!!) telling me all the reasons he didn't think I could succeed as an agent and simultaneously going on about how great he was. He made me do role playing stuff, like trying to sell him a pen when he already had 5 of them, and pretending to be a crazy tenant in an apartment I wanted to show. I was like look buddy, I'm not gonna put some Kung Fu moves on some fucking psychopath to get people into an apartment. That's gotta be the landlord's problem. I wanted to leave after about half an hour. And then, at the end, he was like "So can you start Monday?" I was like umm...yeah...Let me get back to you on that.... I'm not even gonna email him though, cause I'm so scared he'd write back.

This morning I had an interview with a guy who was infinitely more sane. The place seemed nice enough, but it didn't make me want to leap for joy or anything. It was just kind of meh.

But then yesterday, I had an interview with this guy who was super nice and looked like a slightly chubby John Cusak. This, I feel, makes him the ideal boss. Plus he's got a girlfriend so I could have a total miniature office crush on him without having it get all weird. And I guess whatever he said about what the job would involve sounded good. Whatever. It gave me the warm fuzzies. I want to work at a place that gives me warm fuzzies.

So I think I may actually do this real estate thing. I wrote a letter to the Division of Professional Licensure to count my Property class as my education requirement. As soon as I get the waiver, I can sign up for the test. They give you your results and your license the day of. Rather unlike another profession I can think of... But we shouldn't speak of such things. November's getting awfully close.

2006-10-17T10:59:00.000-05:00

I went home for the weekend to visit my grandma. They've got her pneumonia (which, I must point out, they gave her) under control and are phasing out the antibiotics. She was pretty incoherent on Saturday, but on Sunday she was much more with it. My mom was trying to ask her what she wanted for breakfast and she was like "I want pudding, but only so I can throw it at them!" Heh. She's getting no sleep and almost no food, so hopefully we can get her back to the nursing wing of her retirement community soon and then back into her apartment pretty quickly from there.

The Downward Spiral Of My Career

2006-10-12T14:31:00.000-05:00

I got fingerprinted this morning. No, not because I finally resorted to selling my spare narcotics to the neighborhood children. I applied for a job at the IRS. No, not a law job, although technically I suppose all their jobs involve tax law to some degree. No, the job I applied for is basically glorified telemarketing. I would have to sit in some warehouse in the middle of nowhere wearing a headset and having people call up and scream at me. All this, for $14.49/hour. And yet, boy howdy is this a popular position. They must have processed 500 people today, and I don't even know if today is the only day they're doing it. They're only looking for 50 people. I missed half a day of work to go.

The lady who fingerprinted me remarked on the clearness of my prints. She told me to avoid becoming a criminal. I told her I was trying.

Upon reaching work, I decided I would become a real estate agent. The agencies are always fishing for fresh meat on the university job boards, so I sent my resume to 6 places. One of them already called back and wants to interview me. I don't forsee getting a temp job for next week, so I'm doing that on Monday afternoon. That gives me 4 days to figure out whether or not I actually want to be a real estate agent. If anyone has any good "Oh god don't do that!" real estate horror stories, please relate them to me before Monday.

Getting a real estate license is kind of exciting though, in that it's the one way I could ever put my Property class to use (other than in hunting disputes over who gets the dead fox.) Here, apparently, you can get a sales license just by taking Property at a law school & passing some test. The test, not being administered by lawyers, can't be that hard.

The drawback, I suppose, is that I'm pretty sure you don't get paid. As I understand it, you get a commission and that's it. I don't know that I would necessarily like working and not getting paid. I think you have to pay for all sorts of outlandish stuff too. Kind of like becoming an Avon lady. Hmm... yeah... maybe I should be an Avon lady......... Or - OR! - I could PRETEND to be an Avon lady and really just sell drugs out of my little makeup kit! Yeah buddy! That's where the money is!

Sweet, Sweet Freedom

2006-10-11T14:00:00.000-05:00

My boss called me in to her office this afternoon and was asking me things like "How many of these have you done?" and "How long do they take you?" and adding up the time and I was FLIPPING OUT because I'm always totally paranoid that anywhere I'm working monitors internet use and is going to fire me. So I totally thought she was going to yell at me for being a lazy slacker leech who's bleeding their company dry. But instead she said she was ever so sorry, but they just don't have as much work as she thought they would, and they're probably not going to need me after this week.

Hooray!!! Finally!!! I'm free!!! So very nearly free!!!

After I assured her that no, no, that's ok, that's why they call us temps, while restraining the near-uncontrolable urge to jump for joy, I called up both my other agencies and told them to find me something that pays a living wage, for the love of god, and is related to the law. They seemed fairly receptive to the idea. This is good. Very, very good.

I Blame the Birth Control

2006-10-10T12:02:00.001-05:00

I would also like to inform the world that I watched Dances With Wolves again this weekend and could not stop sobbing the entire time. It was the 4 hour version too, so it took some stamina. I cried for the first 3 hours because I knew they were going to shoot the horse. I left the room for the hour when I thought the horse thing might be. I returned to the room well after I knew it was over, sat down, and immediately burst into great honking drooling sobs because I knew the horse was dead.

I also got a little weepy watching a CSI where the bad guy broke in and bludgeoned a family that was going to sit down and watch a movie together. The thing that really got me was when he smashed up their bowl of popcorn. I just found that excessive.

I feel that this is one small step away from crying at that depression commercial, which, by the way, I have preemptively stopped watching when it comes on, just in case.

Paradoxically, I'm itching to go see Saw 3 the second it comes out. Those people don't have families I guess. Or horses.