random thoughts

1. I am really tired. Ok, that's not a thought. But I am so tired and my head hurts and so do my eyeballs.

2. AWB's blog is on fire! I should blog like this. I think I used to. Hmm. This blog sucks nowadays, I know. But it's hard to get that personal and feel comfortable. AWB does periodic purges of her archives, and I don't want to do that. Therefore, I only put stuff up here that I don't mind being out there (trivial, yes, but intensely personal, not as much), given that so many people know who I really am and the legal academy is still somewhat stodgy. What say you, folks? More law? More letters? More of Belle? The introduction of the epistolary blogging format with Amber should shake things up. I am considering writing my co-bloggers as well.

I was reading through some of my archives, and I used to be a bit more personal, but more in a complaining way. Now I'm relatively happy, and lacking drama, this blog lacks drama. Maybe I should hang out with more jerks like I used to so that I can tell you stories about being ditched on the streets of New York and all the friendship implosions I used to have. It seems like lately all I do is make delicious meals for TD and have nice weekends and relatively productive days. Better for me, but more boring for the blog.

3. I really don't want to go to these academic conferences, but I'm submitting proposals anyway. Well, I do want to go, but I don't want to do the work for a conference paper, travel to a new city, pony up for a hotel, schmooze until my introverted self cries out in pain and reverts to a fetal position every night, and do all that stuff. This year was conference-free. It was pretty awesome and unstressful. No, I'm not going to AALS. Unless you offer me a place to stay, it'll be too much money for too many weeks away from home, what with the visiting of the parental units and then the conference. Oddly, when I spend more than three weeks here I get the urge to go away and find nature, but more than a week away and all I want to do is bake a cake and snuggle on the couch. But three weeks here and I never get the urge to go a-conferencing.

4. Every time I see a movie set in a tropical paradise, I think "that's awesome!" and tell TD we should go there, until I remember that I can't swim, thereby ruling out most of the recreational activities. I also hate hot, humid weather. I have two or three bikinis, but I hate sitting on the beach for the sake of tanning, as I don't like getting tan lines and my mother indoctrinated me from an early age that only peasants are dark and beauty is fair, which reached a crisis in college when I learned what post-colonial anxiety was. Oh, and I am congenitally incapable of relaxing and resorting. I start wondering if there's anything to read and itch to surf the internet, which I can do at home. Maybe we can hike the volcanoes. But then it's still hot and I'm still wearing a bikini, and I hate doing sit ups.

As such, I tend to think Montreal in the winter is a great, great vacation idea, because I could explore a Europeanish city with a better exchange rate and less linguistic snobbery and eat really good food and listen to jazz. I would think that Telluride is a great idea too, except that I can't ski, although I like snow hikes. Or say, hiking into the Grand Canyon or seeing Mayan ruins. Yes, these are good vacations.

5. I hate puffy sleeves. I hate bubble hems. Fashion retailers, what is wrong with you. Also, what is up with the Mrs. Roper caftan dresses and big ass beads and baubles.

6. I am so excited to see TD perform the sax at his office party next week that it hurts. Since his boss is going to be there, along with his whole office, I will refrain from opening a six pack of Hanes and throwing panties on the stage, one after the other, while shouting "I want your babies!" Mainly because I would feel the need to add "One day in the far future! Once I'm tenure-track!"

I plan to wear a version of this outfit to the office party, but with better accessories and of course, high heels. I do love the full bell skirt with the slimming waistband, and it's appropriately called the "Belle skirt" in the J.Crew catalogue. Plus I got it for $9 on sale. I'm wearing a dress like this, but not shiny, to the wedding on Sunday. Maybe I can be both Betty and Joan. I bring it bettter as Joan though. But one should not go as Joan to her significant other's work party.

7. I'm making split pea soup tomorrow, with bone-in ham shanks as the base. "Bone-in ham shanks" sounds funny to me, but I just watched an Apatow-produced movie and so my sense of humor has become more juvenile as the immediate short-term effect.

8. This is my favorite card game, and despite my lack of poker face and inability to control my giggling, I will decimate you at it. I plan to learn TD's games too, which are for some reason crotchety 80 year old man games or fin-de-siecle games like whist, euchre and bridge.

9. I really like the theoretical and policy side to administrative law.

10. I like social network theory, but do not know it's place, or if it should have one, in legal doctrine. But it's interesting. Hard to say something new about it though, but one of my advisers is really interested in one of my ideas integrating the two.