Otherwise, I haven’t really been great about prioritizing the things I maybe sort of need to do, like: call my car insurance company to figure out why they’re not entirely covering what they said they’d cover (bastards!), sneak in doctor-dentist-optometrist visits, cancel my gym membership, pay my massive library fines, oh, and pack. Though these things invariably percolate inside my brain and make it hurt a little, I’m generally taking this moving process with equanimity, even though there are many stressing factors on top of that, such as: Eli has not yet found a job. And oh my gawd I have to teach bored middle schoolers in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. Still, these things are fine, I’ll wing it when I get there, right?

No, the only time I really stress out is when people inquire about my progress. A TA wandered in briefly between classes yesterday to chat. “Do you know when you’re leaving?” she asked, innocently enough.

“Yes, next Wednesday,” said I.

Her eyes bugged out to cartoon anime proportions. “OH my GOD! That’s really soon? Are you packed yet? What are you going to do with ALL your STUFF? Do you have a replacement for your job yet? How are you going to get everything DONE?!”

Now this sort of contagious anxiety is helpful when, say, Tim Gunn does it on Project Runway, and to a designer who has like five minutes before judging starts and all they’ve got is a piece of rope and some M&Ms. NOT SO MUCH TO ME.

Back, I say! I’ll get it done in the nick of time, like I always do. Sheesh.

* just in case HR is reading this and deduces who I am through Internet trickery, she was the most qualified out of all the applicants. definitely heads and shoulders above me!

Anywhere, here are the major life updates in easy to digest bullet point format:

- I have decided not to go to law school. At least, not yet. The prospect of tens of thousands of debt hanging around my neck, without a strong guarantee of a job at the end of the tunnel, seemed a wee bit unpalatable to me this year. But…
- I’m sick of this town. I love my friends and I love my family, but if I still find myself hanging around the Taproom on Saturdays a year from now, I…well, I don’t know what I would do. Get real drunk and grumpy-dance, maybe. So the solution to this is…
- Eli and I are packing our bags and taking ESL teaching jobs in South Korea! Right when things are ratcheting up between the ROK and their pleasant neighbors to the north. Wonderful timing! We are great thinkers, Eli and I. Especially since…
- Technically, Eli doesn’t have a job offer yet. Turns out ESL jobs in Korea don’t grow from trees any more (or they do, but are immediately plucked off by more aggressive, having-their-shit-together birds). Now initially, I had figured that it would be easier for Eli to get a job since he is, well, white. And by all accounts, it is much easier to land a job teaching English if, say, you look like a creature that knows how to speak English; no matter if Eli often talks as if he is too lazy to open his jaw and separate the words tumbling out (he is).

A month into our job search, and Eli hasn’t had any luck. I have taken a job offer in a tiny village of about, oh, maybe 10,000 souls in a mountainous village, about an hour and a half east of Seoul by bus. It’s a public school post, which – long story short – means I won’t have to deal with the numerous reported shenanigans that those who work in private schools (called “hagwons”) tend to encounter. Of course, public schools have their challenges, too – yet it seems like a safer bet, the work hours are low (less than 22 hours a week for a full time job!), I’ll get oodles of vacation time, and worst case scenario, I’ll actually get paid on time – more than I can expect from the average hagwon.

As anyone who has heard me blather on and on about this job decision for the past few weeks knows, I am nervous. Not so much about the spectre of shabby, starved North Koreans storming the DMZ or anything; I’m more scared of bored schoolkids. I don’t know if Eli can find a job near my little remote town. The recruiter who found me my job (who is amazing and has been super communicative, Korvia rocks!) swears that she’ll be able to get Eli a job near me after the schools return from vacation, but how much can she really do if there aren’t any jobs? I don’t know how the villagers will react to me and Eli; apparently rural Koreans tend to be less hostile to foreigners, but what about mixed-race couples? How will they react to the fact that I look really damn Korean (I’ve encountered Koreans who will attest to this), but I don’t speak the language and my parents are actually originally from Vietnam, which as far as I can tell, is kind of like Korea’s Mexico?

In summary: I’m leaving all my friends and family behind, in this lovely tiresome town where I am comfortable, to go basically live as some sort of weird Cylon creature in a village in another country for a year. Am I totally crazy? Probably, but am I going to go do this thing anyways? Hell yes I am, ma’am, and ain’t no Taepodong gonna stop me from enjoying this journey.

I expect this to be followed up with yet another HR email to us fatty secretaries with weight loss tips. I think I could probably write these. “Tip no. 1: stop having cake day.”

Until I looked at the bin and thought to myself, hey! that’s just a garbage can with an open bottom! And busted garbage cans can be had for far cheaper than fifty dollars. Turning to the trusty dusty Internets, I found a number of websites outlining DIY compost bins – and quickly became confused by the sheer variety. Worm composters? I must confess I’m a bit bigoted towards legless creatures, and the thought of having to handle hundreds of slimy wrigglies writhing in rotting kitchen slop….eww. There are instructions available for setting up several different wood contraptions, all of which entail things like “sawing” and “precise measurements”…a little too complicated for a compost noob. Then I came across a description for how to build a closed air compost system. “Easy to build.” Aha!

So I gathered my ingredients. I made some minor substitutions; since Krissy happened to have a lot of chicken wire laying around, I borrowed some of this along with all the tools, and decided to make her a composter too.

So far so good!

Ingredients: trash can, utility knife, tin snips, chicken wire, screws, hammer and nail. The hammer and nail was used to make holes in the can for screws; a drill would be ideal but this method works just fine.

Despite my ill-advised attempts to photograph myself stabbing into a rubber bin with a box cutter, I failed to slash my own wrists. Eat it, Darwin!

Step 1: make ye a large hole in the bottom of the trash can. Leave enough room to screw in your chicken wire. (Owing to the awkward shape of this particular trash can, I ended up needing to screw the chicken wire into the sides of the can anyways).

Halfway done, in no time at all!

Now take those tin snips and trim the chicken wire to a size slightly bigger than the hole you have just made. Here’s where the chicken wire makes it a bit tricky – you’ll need to trim the chicken wire so that you can slightly unwind the “ends” to wrap around the screws. Like so:

Set the wire circle aside. Now use your hammer and nail (or drill, if you were smart) to partially install the screws. I only ended up using about 8 – 10 per bin, just enough to keep the chicken wire taut. Use your wire circle as a guide to where to install the screws, if need be!

Note the lack of polish to the rough edges and the blatant crooked placement of the screws. Who cares? This part is going in the dirt and is having kitchen refused tossed into it, so no need to be a perfectionist!

Unwind the wiry ends you have created when you snipped your circle, and wrap these ends around the screws you just installed. Continue working until you’ve got the circle more or less wedded to the can, for better or for worse! If the shabbiness of the product bothers you, or if you don’t particularly feel like being poked in the chest while you carry this thing to its final destination, trim and bend in any chicken wire ends that are sticking out.

Compost view.

Now the fun part – paint your bin! You’re going to the trouble of making your own compost bin, might as well jazz it up a bit.

Appropriate spelling and grammar optional, natch.

Banana peel and leaves equals….

…a flower whose petals kind of resemble the banana peel, turned upside down? I think this would have come across better had I stuck with the yellow paint for the petals.

There you go, a new thing to throw carrot ends and avocado peels into! If I had to do this again I would use slightly larger trash cans, as I went the cheap route and did mere 20 gallons – blatantly defying the website instructions which told me to use 32 gallons or larger. Also, I lined the insides of the trash cans with duct tape markings every six inches, to indicate a point at which it would be a good idea to toss some leaves or lawn trimmings onto the kitchen scraps. I’m not sure if I really need to do that, but it seems like most composters do a mix so I’ll try it out.

Tegan and Sara: So I’d heard their names before, but until the day before the show, I couldn’t tell you if I’d heard their songs or not. (Turns out I had, without recognizing that it was T&S). I think some people get the impression that I know a lot about music, particularly indie rock and whatnot, but my knowledge is actually pretty patchwork, and this happened to be one of my blind spots. I can’t say I dug what little I heard during my pre-show research, but the show was pretty entertaining. Mostly I was amused by the aggressively dancing girl who danced her bony hipster ass in a circle around us, and who severely annoyed the diehard T&S at the show with me – “ugh. She’s not even a real fan.” Apparently little miss Tiny Dancer kept texting when she wasn’t jabbing us with her hips, and made the criminal noob mistake of cheering for their popular radio hits as opposed to their older songs. Anyhow, T&S put on a good show, and regaled the audience with lots of little quirky Canadienne anecdotes between songs.

I didn’t so much care for their opening act, Steel Train, comprised of a bunch of hipster gay boys playing 80′s prog-rock sendups. Just wasn’t my thing, really – and it didn’t help that they broke out into this barbershop quartet routine for one of their songs! They did have cool T-shirts, though.

Beach House: The only one of the four concerts that I would have actually purchased tickets for if I hadn’t won them, owing to the $14 price tag. I didn’t know much about them beforehand, either; I’d just listened to the live stream of their latest album “Teen Dream” off NPR. The album was amazing, of course, and they didn’t really deviate the way they played their songs, which usually bugs me. In this case it didn’t matter; hearing Victoria LeGrand’s ethereal, spookily androgynous voice fill physical space was positively enchanting. Eli mentioned that he had a much greater appreciation seeing the guitarist, Alex Scally, live – it’s tough to pull off dreamy, gauzy guitar plucking, and he does it well.

Their opening act was Bachelorette, a nice seeming girl from New Zealand. She played a short set owing to voice difficulties, though her singing sounded all right. I’m not the biggest fan of laptop-oriented music, though, and wished there was a little more to it besides that.

Jonsi: PHENOMENAL. I can’t stress this enough – if you have the opportunity, go see either him or his band of fellow Icelandic witchgoblins, Sigur Ros, live in concert. Even if you’re not particularly a big fan of the music as heard in mortal album form, just go. Something about the alchemy of a live concert experience transforms this music into a transcendental experience.

Didn’t catch the opener for Jonsi, a band with the highly misleading name of “Death Vessel” – a soft-voiced guy plucking an acoustic guitar.

The Flaming Lips: also a great band to see live, even if you’re not particularly into their music. It’s tough to top a performance that involves the band members emerging from a giant pulsating neon vagina, Wayne Coyne in his patented hamsterball roaming over the audience, a giant catfish attempting to clap with his little stubby fishy fins, and loads and loads of giant balloons and confetti jets.

Jack White’s newest band, The Dead Weather, opened for the Flaming Lips. That particular concert in Kansas City marked the only point on the bands’ respective tours where they would join forces; I guess the Flaming Lips have a long and happy history with Jack White dating back to the time they feuded with Beck while on tour. Jack White apparently cheered up the Lips by bestowing upon them a fiberoptic plastic Jesus, which inspired them to write a thank you song. Inexplicably, the Lips chose not to play this song at the concert? Maybe it was too expected.

Anyhow, the Dead Weather. They also put on a good show, though it was a straight up rock concert featuring straight up classic rock and roll. Krissy said she thought the lead singer, Alison Mosshart, looked completely strung out on heroin. I thought this was probably not the case, as she was bouncing and dancing around all over the stage…as to what she and the rest of the band would do recreationally after the show, of course, I couldn’t comment. Anyhow they looked like typical rock stars, dressed in black and too cool for school. Ho hum. Meanwhile I’m sitting in the audience, knitting. (That’s right bitches. I live life on the EDGE….of a needle.)

We also caught opening bands White Rabbits – who had an impressive percussion section – and Minus the Bear – who Krissy didn’t care for, but E and I enjoyed, though I wonder what they would sound like with the Bear (HA! I slay myself. I really should).

In summation, it was a great month for music in the world of karenology! The fact that so many great bands came (and continue to come) to this area reminds me how lucky we are in Lawrence, and how lucky I am to have been able to see all these shows. It’ll be tough to go back to gazing wistfully at shaky Youtube videos of live recordings. But it was great while it lasted!

Laptop and wrist fully recovered, I decided to search for a new pattern to make a knitted bear for my adorable niece. Signed on to Ravelry and discovered I had a months-old message from a blog reader (people actually read this thing? Not any more, I wager), tipping me off to this fact: someone is selling one of my free patterns on eBay. Using my photos and everything, unless she just happens to have made the exact same cake, down to my mismatched-weight yarns and felt cutouts and everything. Her description reads: “This is printed instuctions of my moms pattern for carrot cake.”

Her mom’s pattern, eh? Turns out I have a long-lost daughter in England, of all places! How about that?

It annoys me greatly that someone is out there, copying my work (rather lazily, I might add) and profiting off it…but the more annoying thing is that poor knitters are actually buying the pattern, paying over two bucks for my MS paint chicken scratch. Yarn is expensive enough, without poor knitters being fleeced by paying for a pattern that is, you know, free. I don’t feel I am skilled enough to develop patterns for sale just yet, because I do expect a degree of professionalism in the pattern (sizing, gauge and, you know, testing it out as opposed to making it up as I go along). Of course, “professionalism” is a word that one would not use to describe my long-lost eBay daughter.

Still more annoying is the effect this is having on me – I will definitely think twice before I post things to share with other crafters, and I feel bad but I’m not sure how else to protect myself from intellectual theft. I love that the online crafting community provides a great wealth of resources for crafters to share knowledge, in good faith! I hate it when leeches try to take advantage of this good will.

My policy on my patterns: personally I don’t care if people knit octopuses or chocolate cakes from my pattern, and sell the objects themselves. You’ve put the work into it, and congratulations, if you could actually figure out how to successfully make a toy from my incoherent notes, good job! I do care if people STEAL MY PATTERN and sell it as their own, or their “moms.”

Hell, this particular thief might not even know how to knit – looping yarn through needles is not a skill-set required for stealing patterns. All one needs is a lack of shame.

First attempt: went down to the Jackpot with Krissy to get tickets to this show, and also for the upcoming Midlake concert.

“Oh, Midlake canceled, and we’re completely sold out of Beach House tickets,” said the bartender, delivering a double whammy of bad news. Krissy and I had been really excited about the Midlake show…and how in the world did an April show sell out by early February? “Oh, we’ll definitely have more Beach House printed and ready by next week, so just come back then.” Phew.

We decided to have a beer anyway and process this poor news before moving on, when a middle aged lesbian / bar lizard started talking our ears off – ranting about the latest city controversy regarding some designer drug in the process of becoming criminalized. She was, of course, most emphatically opposed to this and did not hesitate to let us know about it. She also had very interesting theories on how law enforcement is conducted in our fair city. There was a pretty controversial raid on a store that carried the drug (K2), and I mentioned the common speculation that this particular store had been raided because the owner had testified before the legislature on behalf of K2. I thought that this explanation would sound reasonable enough to paranoid people, but no…the old bar lizard decided the store had been raided, “because the government keeps track of receipts and what’s sellin’ out.” Apparently the electronic cash registers send some signal beam to some shadowy control center, where bureaucrats can monitor individual store sales and notice sharp upticks in the sale of quasi-legal items. Somehow her explanation also involved Little House on the Prairie?

Bar Lizard was highly entertaining to listen to, but – as with my father – my ears can only tolerate so much lecturing, no matter what the subject, so Krissy and I excused ourselves and shuffled off once the old bar lizard paused to take another swig of Hamm’s.

Attempt two: a friend of mine mentioned that Beach House had changed venues to the Granada to accommodate more people. A few days after the venue change had been officially announced, I rode up to the ticket window and asked the guy there about the tickets. “We don’t have those printed yet,” said he. “Come back next Monday.”

Attempt three: I rode back next Monday, to find the window deserted and the lights off inside. Grr…

Attempt four: Same as attempt three, though the lights were on inside. Nobody at the ticket window, though, and I had to meet some friends at the other end of Mass St so I just rode onwards.

Ever elusive Beach House tickets! I’d just resigned myself to haunting the ticket window every subsequent Monday, and maybe just trying to get tickets at the door – hoping that the tickets didn’t all sell out to other people.

Then yesterday, before heading down to meet my alcoholic friends at Harbor Lights (they basically showed up there right after the employees, but I thought drinking before noon was a bit much), I glanced at lawrence.com to check on the time of the Downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Immediately underneath the time, I saw a posting about a Twitter contest to win tickets to four upcoming shows: Tegan & Sara, The Flaming Lips, Jonsi (lead singer for Sigur Ros) and – of course – Beach House. Apart from Beach House, all pretty expensive shows, and it would be a ridiculous boon to win tickets to all four of these shows. The contest was basically “look for a guy with a funny mustache in a green shirt.” Which, on St. Patty’s Day in Lawrence, is like half the population of the downtown area!

I met up with Krissy on her lunch break, when she came over to greet us (and maybe sneak a quick beer), when over her shoulder I noticed a guy standing at the bar, with a respectably full mustache and a green shirt. Suddenly, though the potential prize was admittedly sweet, I had a moment of doubt. How do I walk up to him and say, “hey, are you the guy from the Internet contest?” Even if he was, there was just no non-dorky way of saying this.

Luckily Krissy was there, because I just informed her of the dilemma and without hesitation, she walked right up to the mustachioed man and said, “Do you have tickets?” Mustachioed man reluctantly said, “you’ve got me” – poor guy had been hoping that the contest would last a bit longer.

Disappointing for him but exciting for us: WE WON! I never win contests! Twitter actually made itself useful! Maybe it was Fate that prevented me from successfully purchasing those Beach House tickets. What a lucky day yesterday was, for a girl without a drop of Irish blood in her veins.

Afterwards we geeked out a little with the singer, who is this really tall black guy with dreads, about iPhones and their various iterations. Not exactly the most stereotypical country / bluegrassy concert experience! I thought back to the time I went to a Gillian Welch show, and had these two middle aged white ladies who kept sneaking up behind me to touch my hair, because they had never seen Asian hair in person before? Made me appreciate that times appear to be changing.

Last night’s show wasn’t without its own creepers, however. One guy in the band played a lap slide guitar, which I’d never seen before, and immediately thought was the coolest thing ever. (I could totally play that while recuperating from tendonitis!) A guy in the audience also apparently thought this was the coolest thing ever, because he squirreled his way right up to the guy playing the lap slide, planted himself firmly within the poor guy’s personal bubble, and touched his shoulder! The lap slide player brushed him off and continued playing, but the creepster went to get a beer and lurched his way back up in Lap Slider’s business. At this, the bouncer did his job and bounced Creepster right out of the bar, seizing the mostly full beer glass and disposing of it. (I bet Creepster was really sore about that). Some of Creepster’s buddies tried to plead with the bouncer to let him back in, but really, unnerving the band is a pretty major offense. Not ten minutes after his ejection, Creepster casually went up to the door and tried to regain entry, as if the bouncer would have just forgotten about it? He eventually skulked off into the night, this time – for once – not reeking of booze.

Towards the very end of the show, I got up to use the restroom, leaving my stuff in Krissy’s care. Upon my return, I saw that one of Creepster’s friends – Lady Skeeves – had usurped my seat, across from a really uncomfortable looking Krissy. Lady Skeeves wore baggy filthy camo pants, and an entire ecosystem as a hair accessory. I shrugged and figured it was almost the end of the set; if she wanted the seat it was hers.

Then Lady Skeeves did something that unfortunately distracted me from the great finale of the Woes show – she ran her fingers through her stiffened, matted hair and started vigorously SCRATCHING. In the dim hazy light my germophobic mind saw thousands of lice bailing onto the table, onto the seat, onto my stuff! I looked at Krissy in alarm and she grabbed my stuff out of the line of fire, brave friend.

I’m not sure what Lady Skeeves was after – she didn’t seem interested in the band that much, and Krissy said she had marched right over to my seat to steal it, with an air of purpose. Eh, maybe she was trying to seduce Krissy with her verminous wiles, and was angry at me for intruding. Or maybe she wanted to talk with us, cause we look like okay people. Maybe she just wanted to unload some of the cargo in her hair. Whatever the reason, after the song was finished we grabbed our stuff and got in line to talk to the band. She skulked off into the night after her friend the Creepster.

So a slight itch on my back last Friday turned into this brilliant scarlet rash by the time Saturday rolled around, and come Sunday, it had spread around to the front of my chest. Web fueled paranoia convinced me that my torso would fall off.

Calm as always, Elijah mentioned that it looked more like a case of the shingles. I consulted Web MD and the symptoms seemed to match. I figured there wasn’t much to do until I could get in to see a doctor on Monday, so I just waited and shoved my zombiesque fears into the back of my mind while I worked on my personal statement for law school. Now those of you who may be reading this who are familiar with the law school applications process are probably thinking that this point is pretty late in the game to start applying, and you’re right. Many of my perfectly punctual peers have already received their acceptance and rejection letters for the 2010-2011 cycle. And I started this entire process last June, when I took the LSAT, so it’s not as though I didn’t have plenty of time. My references got their recommendation letters in by the end of November. The only thing I had left to accomplish was a personal statement.

That’s right, a personal statement. Not a research paper, which would require fact checking. The task literally entails writing about myself, which I have done on this stupid blog for six going on seven years already. I mean, how goddamn hard could that possibly be? It’s not like the poor guy who actually has to read the stack of personal statements will call a James Frey on me if I made up an anecdote (ha, who am I kidding, nobody reads these. They probably just shred most of them after glancing at the LSAT scores).

But here’s the catch – apart from blogging, I have not written a single thing since graduating from college in 2006. Every single time I have tried to keep up with my writing, start a new story, even edit and develop ones I’ve already written – this little rowdy Greek chorus in my head pops up, jeering and heckling my every word. And that chorus trotted out in full force, at maximum volume, whenever I worked on my personal statement. “YOU SUCK! Why would any law school take you?” “Oh, now you’re trying to brag about how you’re a good writer? Yeah, that’s a real good tactic.” “You’re applying way too late anyways to get into anywhere good. Maybe you should look into clown school.” “Ha, try bridge-jumping school. You’ll probably fail at that too!” What a valuable, helpful resource to retain in one’s head. (Hey brain scientists: which part do these jerks inhabit? Maybe I could just accidentally fall and hit my head there).

Chorus or not, I am just no good at boasty writing. Most people aren’t, actually, judging from examples of successful personal statements. I guess if you have a 4.0 and a near perfect LSAT, you could turn in an elephant doodled in shit on a bar napkin, and still get a free ride anywhere you like. My stats are good but not quite shit-elephant good so I struggled onwards, the little chorus shouting epithets and filling my head with self-loathing. To make matters worse, I was increasingly distracted by the rash on my back, which stung constantly by this point. I removed my bra, thinking maybe that the strap was chafing my skin. Eventually I just took some ibuprofen and some allergy medicine and went to bed, failing again. Well, I’d have till midnight the next day.

Monday I tried calling the doctor – no answer, so I decided to show up at the doctor’s office, which was full of sick people bearing masks. To a hypochondriac, nothing is more terrifying than being in proximal distance of masked sickies. Tried to set a proper appointment, and the only one that was available was during my work hours, so I just decided to come back after work and try my luck then. I ended up having to wait over two and a half hours to have a doctor take once quick glance at me and confirm that yes indeedy, I did have shingles. (Texted the boyfriend to inform of my lengthy socialist wait for health care). Apparently shingles is a resurgence of the dormant chicken pox virus, which lurks silently in your nerves for years, until a moment of high stress triggers an ambush to knife you while you’re already down. Gee thanks, chicken pox. Asshole. I didn’t get out of the doctor’s office and the drugstore to pick up my prescription until about 9:45 – just a couple of hours to refine a personal statement, which should be plenty of time, right?

My mind shuffled through the tasks I had left to do, a paragraph or two that I’d either need to cut or expand, when – OF COURSE! – blue and red lights danced in my rearview mirror. “Miss, are you aware that you ran that stop sign?” asked the officer. Stop sign. Yes, I remembered that stop sign – a notorious spot for police bored and with nothing to do, the one between the gas stations at the top of 9th and Iowa. One I usually am smart enough to circumvent by electing to drive a few feet further to turn at the lighted intersection, but this time I didn’t. “I did?” “Yep. Gonna have to write you a ticket for that.”

Whether I stopped or not – that is something that is kind of subjective, right? I mean, I’m pretty sure I sssstttttoopppppped. So maybe the officer wanted to see more staccato, less legato. Whatever. $132?! Okay, that is ridiculous. Maybe I could get that fine reduced in court, according to rumored anecdotes from friends of friends who had done the same. By the time I was done being stopped!, I now had an hour and a half to get everything done. Still doable.

There are few things more depressing than still finding yourself at work at 10:00 at night, but since my laptop is still out of commission, I had few other options. Thankfully my helpful sister was online to provide 1) sanity and 2) a fresh perspective, and I managed to cobble together something halfway decent, if not ideal. Even with her help, it took another hour to get it to the point where it was presentable. Countdown one hour. Since everything is submitted online, this part should be a breeze.

WRONG again. I guess the LSAC servers were overloaded with lots of procrastinating dummies like me, trying to upload their personal statements and resumes at the same time. I’d apply to a school, Firefox would implode, I’d have to start it up again and crash it right back into the wall. Eventually I managed to eke in four applications to schools, when I noticed that the timestamp on the LSAC submission was going by Eastern time. Foiled again! I was a day too late and I didn’t even realize it.

I limped back to my car, defeated, my flesh burning and my head in a daze. I still kept it together, barely, right until the moment I got home and my roommate James asked me the innocuous question: “So, how was your night?”

For no justifiable reason at all, I just burst into tears. Poor James helped me open my beer and fled to the safety of his room. He’s a good roommate.

Epilogue to this long-ass post: I have provisionally decided that I probably won’t be going to law school in this next cycle, but at the very least I have everything ready and prepared for the next one. I’m probably not psychological ready for it, for one thing. A number of law school veterans have come out of the woodwork to warn me of the travails ahead (thanks Sara ), and if just the application process itself is enough to bring down some arcane old-timey disease on me, I shudder to think of what medical horrors await me during my first year of law school.

Another reason to wait a year: Eli’s bizarre eye troubles are happily resolved, we’re still young and unfettered. Maybe it’s time to pack our bags and head east.