Why would I want anything with a mind of its own bobbing about between my legs?

ARGH. I am currently writing a section for a competition brief in which the facts section can only be 1200 words. I finished the first draft...2500. So not quite your typical "snip out the adjectives and adverbs" type of rewrite. :/ WHOLE. EVENTS. They must go. Sigh. I'm down to almost 2000 words. Like I wasn't already regretting this competition...

ANYWAY. I did get to apartment-sit last night and used the time to polish off a good piffle book, Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? She is a comedian and writer--she was hired with five others to write six episodes of a first season for a remake of the British series The Office...yup, obviously it's been going pretty well ever since. (She also plays Kelly Kapoor on the show.)



It is the perfect book for a bath or wine or whatever, and if it takes you more than a day and a half to read it, you're doing it wrong. (As the book itself even points out.) I wouldn't say it was hysterical, but it had a lot of great stuff in it and lots of fun things to identify with. It wasn't a chick book by any means, but I would admit it may find more favor in a female audience...

I am also having dinner with a good friend tomorrow night, so I am looking forward to that. She was a very good friend of mine throughout university and we moved to Austin about the same time, but we lost touch after I moved to Japan. We used to always see Cohen Brothers movies together, so I blame her for O Brother sucking because I had to see it without her. But anyway! A mutual friend found her and put us in touch--so it has been ten years! She is just the same (though with some major life changes) and it was great to be able to pick up as though time hadn't passed at all. (Except we'd both traveled extensively, she's divorced now, etc., you know.)

The night after that, my oldest sister and I are taking my oldest niece to see a screening of Fellowship of the Ring, which will be her first time to see it. (Though she has started reading the books, I believe.) Because did you know IT HAS BEEN TEN YEARS SINCE THE FILM PREMIERED?? I really could have done without that information. :/ It's at a cool, newish theater I've been wanting to check out, but it's an hour away. I have to get back into that DFW state of mind...everything is at least 30-40 minutes away, that's the norm.

So I have to make sure to cram my work in somewhere so I can still enjoy all the fun stuff without guilt...

Next time, I get to seduce the rich guy.

I've been catching up on some fun, mindless action movies at the theater, hooray!



I actually liked Mission: Impossible, Ghost Protocol, much better than I expected. It did a great job with tension and action scenes. No one watches these things for character development I hope, because they will be largely disappointed. But it was directed by Brad Bird (of Pixar fame) and I thought he nailed it.

For me, I really appreciated the way they made all the stunts look (sound!) like they hurt. (Though suspension of disbelief is also crucial since they all keep running around at full-speed after each.) From what I've read online, it also sounds like Tom Cruise did a lot of his own stunts--including shots outside the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (above).

Even before that, I saw Sherlock Holmes 2: Game of Shadows. It, too, was well done but more of a oncer for me.



I still think this would have been a perfectly successful franchise without having to rape the whole Sherlock Holmes story, but whatever. It's fun, but you have to go in knowing it will be almost grotesquely slick, self-aware and will toe the line of over-produced. But yeah, it's fun. Some fairly solid lines, that's for sure.



And just to bring it down another five notches, I caught up with last year's Another Year. I thought it won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Mike Leigh) but apparently not! It was nominated, of course, but The King's Speech won. Eh. I disagree, but then again, I often do.

Anyway, Another Year was really good but it was really fucking depressing. I'm always a fan of character-driven films, even though so often they are complete and utter downers. Needless to say, the actors are all superb here, particularly in light of the fact that Jim Broadbent gets the luck of being the only mostly-likeable character. The others aren't characters you openly dislike (with one possible exception--and even Mary, Lesley Manville, isn't an open and shut case), there's more to the characters than that.

I hope, despite having way too much writing and research to do, to get some Angelika time in...they have Shame, The Artist, The Descendants, A Dangerous Method, J. Edgar, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and then there's still The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo everywhere, as well!

Argh, priorities.

What about my holiday wish that we not be forced to attend meetings that degrade our sense of adulthood?

So the Tori Amos show was a lot of fun!



In all honesty, I didn't recognize most of the songs (although I did finally flesh out my Tori discography not terribly long ago). The set list often varies quite a lot from city to city in her case, so it kinda sucked to look at other cities' lists afterwards and think, "Dammit, I should have seen the Joburg show!" But it was still a very good show.

I also caught up on some TV over the past week. I don't know that it's great or anything, but I have been enjoying American Horror Story. Glad to see Connie Britton working steadily. Also, The Walking Dead has turned in a pretty solid season so far (after bumbling around for 1-2 episodes) and PanAm got much, much better after a fairly awful 3-4 episode foot-finding gap and they finally figured out what to do with Christina Ricci's character. I know the French stewardess is the fan favorite, but I quite enjoy Kate.



I'm also fairly certain throwing Goran Visnjic in for a couple episodes never hurt anybody's ratings.

2 Broke Girls is something I cannot admit to watching--it has a laugh track for God's sake (which is ok if you're a pre-1993 sitcom and therefore grandfathered in due to nostalgia)--but it also has Kat Dennings.



It's actually not too bad for a sitcom, but that laugh track. MAKE IT STOP.

There is another show I really won't admit to watching but the worst part is that it only has two weeks left so I have to watch it in Texas since I fly home Wednesday. So everyone will find out anyway. Oh well. Who was concerned about dignity, not I. Plus the show keeps pissing me off because the judges are mostly all worthless and the wrong people have been eliminated for the past two weeks, grrrrr.

Ok, I am clearly procrastinating instead of working on my stupid philosophy chapter that I am really ready to burn rather than begin YET ANOTHER re-write. SIGH. WAIT! I should pick out DVDs to take to Denton! Or make hard nog! Or continue binge-reading The Bloggess. ANYTHING.

These were Italian!

So I've been busting my ass on this chapter for my professor's international-law-with-an-interdisciplinary-approach undergraduate book. ALL SEMESTER. It sucked because initially she was all, here, do this in two weeks with these materials. So I did. And then she was all, oh no, this is going to need more to it. (Duh, you gave me two weeks, the fuck were you thinking? IT INVOLVES COMPLEX PHILOSOPHY.)

So then I worked on it some more. For two weeks. And she was all, no, let's re-do the outline of this chapter and reorganize it. Three more weeks.

So today I get an email from her and she's all, hey, this is moving in the right direction but I really want to spend more time on it before we move onto the other section. Can I send you a marked up version to go over before our last meeting (i.e., the day before I fly out)?

I would just like to say that I very nearly wrote her back, "Hi, Professor [redacted]. That sounds good to me. Bring it on." Because seriously, I have just resolved myself to the idea that that chapter is never going to die. But I am less stressed than many past semesters, so I went delete, delete, delete, then wrote (instead of the last sentence) something like, "I can make time to look over..." etc.

But it was fairly tempting and she may have even found it humorous.

What, do you think there's a lot of work down on the pier for hookers? Do you think I'm giving blow jobs down there to goldfish?

So guess who's ethical!! :D I was just sitting in the clinic earlier trying to fax off forms to a couple halfway houses to get my client's former treatment records and there it was...that ominous email that reads, "MPRE score report is ready." And you just have to click on it, regardless of where you are. I am very happy with my score and it makes me feel slightly better about my inability to take multiple choice tests and my odds on the bar.

Also, so far it sounds as if all my friends passed as well, fingers crossed.

I had a good day in court yesterday as well, mostly because my director decided we don't need any more cases right now. I had been throwing up earlier that morning since 5am but somehow dragged my ass into court (everything is better now, it was just...related to a particular chromosome, shall we say) and considering I have a suppression motion and trial to prep, I did not even pretend to flinch or hesitate when he asked me, "Do you care if you don't get a new case today?"

I still have a shit-ton to do in my international law work but tonight at least...tonight I am going to walk next door to see TORI AMOS. I would not even be going if my friend hadn't thought to ask me way back when, when they went on sale. So hooray!

Now if only it would snow when I was heading over like it did last year during Weezer (same place, one week later, though). I know, picky, picky princess.

No drums! No drums! Jack Black said no drums!

Needless to say, The Muppets was quite cute. We went to a 7pm show that was very full in a very big theater and you know what? I think there were two whole children. I also think we were in the younger portion of the crowd! <3

You know what we should watch? An American Tail. It's about a little Jewish mouse, with a great big heart...

To try and get in the xmas mood! I have not had the time to make cookies as I have in years past, and Thanksgiving was just sort of lonely and depressing. But anyway!



Yay, I got all those motions and stuff done. It wasn't really a time crunch at all, either. So WHEW.

Completely unrelated to anything, I would just like to say that I love that the only things on my grocery list are "Fancy Feast" and "whiskey" and it looks like a crazy person wrote it.

Classes officially ended for me yesterday, tomorrow they do for the rest of the school in general. It doesn't feel like much, though, since my writing class ended two weeks ago and I still have a client meeting tomorrow (NINE AM?) followed by two court dates in the next 10 days. :/ One of those is a duty date in which I get to pick up a NEW client. Because life isn't busy enough already. :D

Looking forward to a couple things, however, along the little path to the 14th when I fly HOME! Tomorrow night I am really going to try to see some Muppets, Sat night I get to see L--whom I have not seen in...yup, seriously can't recall. Tuesday night is finally Tori Amos night (next door to school, FTW). Then the following Friday we're having a holiday lunch with my clinic, which should be fun. Especially if court that morning goes well (for someone else, not me, WHEW). But I really like the other people in my little "law firm," they are really neat people.

VERY much looking forward to Little D, however, and all the perfect people who will be there! (The popcorn tins, wine, chocolate honeycomb, lobster tails and overabundance of delicious food in general certainly never hurt anything, either.) I just hope I can put a big enough dent in my competition brief, human rights research and suppression motion to be able to enjoy it as much as possible!