Cursed With Ambition

Holiday Perks

One of the best things about being a single guy in my family is that my aunts and grandparents and everyone always see to it that I take home a whole bunch of food left over from the holidays.  I guess they think I'm broke and can't afford food or that since I don't have anybody to cook for me that I don't eat right.  I let them believe whatever they want as long as they keep giving me the goodies.  This Christmas was especially bountiful.  I've had cookies for breakfast for the past couple of days and there's no end in sight. 

Damn I love the holidays!

Holiday Schedule

Me:  "Any plans for New Year's?"

Robo:  "None yet.  There's been a lot of talk though."

Me:  "I'm sure something will materialize.  You know how I feel about it.  I wish I could just not recognize the holiday.  Every year I say that I'm going to take it easy and not drink so much and every year I wake up on January 1st with a hangover that Townes Van Zandt would be proud of."

Robo:  "Not a good way to start the year."

Me:  "That's exactly what sucks about it.  You want to start the year off right.  You know, set the tone, clean slate, renewal and all of that crap."

Robo:  "And this year's going to suck even more because there are no bowl games on New Year's Day."

Me:  "What!!??"

Robo:  "Yeah.  Apparently they moved them to the second because New Year's Day falls on a Sunday and they didn't want to compete with the NFL."

Me:  "That's fucked up."

Robo:  "Yeah.  And the Rose Bowl is on the fourth, which is a Wednesday and I know I'm going to be drinking that night and I won't want to go to work on Thursday."

Me:  "Well I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen to me.  I'm going to get fucking wasted on New Year's Eve and feel like a bag of smashed assholes on Sunday.  I'll probably feel so shitty that I won't travel back to Houston until Monday and I'll probably get to work about three hours late.  Then I'm going to watch Texas play for the national championship and get drunk as hell that night - especially if they win.  So, I'll probably miss work on Thursday, or, if I go at all I won't be worth a shit."

Robo:  "Yep."

Me:  "At least I know this about myself even if I am powerless to change it."

Best Xmas Gifts Ever

What are the 5 best Christmas gifts you've ever gotten?  Reading the previous sentence renders you tagged.

1. A Zippo lighter inscribed with the words "Red Eye."
2. A basketball backboard and rim.
3. Framed family photographs.
4. A red cotton rollneck sweater from J Crew.
5. A watch for Christmas of 1992 - I'm still wearing it.

Worst Xmas Gifts Ever

What are the worst 5 Christmas gifts you've ever gotten?  Reading the previous sentence renders you tagged.

1. A brass lamp and a plastic globe - these were supposed to be my "big gifts" from Santa.  I was eleven.  I didn't believe in Santa anymore, but what eleven year old boy wants a fucking brass lamp and plastic globe of the earth?
2. A plastic skateboard.  This was during the eighties when skateboarding became really popular.  I wanted a simple wooden one - it didn't have to be expensive like a Vision or Peralta.  But it at least had to be made of wood.  No self-respecting thrasher would be caught dead on a fucking plastic skateboard.
3. Dockers.  I wore Dockers pants at one time and I liked them.  But, at some point they were no longer good enough.  Maybe I outgrew them when my sense of style became more sophisticated or something.  I don't know, but for several years after I stopped wearing them I always seemed to get at least one pair.
4. A "hands free" cell phone device that probably weighed as much as the phone itself.
5. A box of chocolates.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE chocolate.  Especially good chocolate.  But, I was in 6th grade at the time and it was from a kid in the class who picked my name.  Plus too, the kid happened to be one of my best friends so I guess I was expecting more.  Anyway, the chocolates were cheap and not very good.  I just remember thinking, "I'm fucking twelve years old.  There's a lot of inexpensive shit that I would've liked and would not be that hard to figure out."  For some reason I just thought a box of chocolates was a shitty gift.

Tagged

I owe Very Metal and ambs responses to their respective memes.

First, I did not attend a single concert when I was in high school.  I lived in Victoria, where there were no concerts, the most popular radio stations featured either Garth Brooks and George Strait  (KIXS Country 107.9) or Elton John and Billy Joel (KVIC 95.1).  (I'm happy to report that the radio station fubar has been remedied with quite possibly the best radio station ever - 98.7 KTXN  Texas Radio.)  Plus too, the holy roller owner of the local Mr. Gatti's, which was THE most popular restaurant in town, coerced the local cable company into dropping MTV from the offerings.  MathJames will not eat Mr. Gatti's pizza to this very day.

The only live music shows I experienced were at dancehalls like Schroeder Hall, Sun Valley and the Inez Community Center.  I saw The Texas Armadillo Band (or TAB for short) many times.  Joe L. Nava and The Border was also popular.  Local bands The Emotions and Acridity had come and gone with the mid-eighties, so country was the only thing available.  So, until I moved to Austin, I had no conception of what good music was.  When I was a freshman in college I went to see the B-52's and The Violent Femmes at the Erwin Center in Austin.  That was my first concert.

5 Quirks

1. I brush my teeth like a caveman.  I'm so focused on getting all surfaces of my teeth, some of which are pretty hard to reach, that I just let the toothpaste/saliva foam run down my hand.  It ain't dainty.  I've been doing it so long that I don't even notice it.  Then one time this girl was watching me brush my teeth with a look of horror and disgust on her face.  I asked her what was wrong and all she did was point to my hand.  I'm a little better about it now.
2. 2 Words:  Public Masturbation.  What can I say?  Sometimes you just gotta rub one out.
3. When I fart in the bathtub I like to bite the bubbles when they come to the surface.  Some people think this is gross, I think it's challenging.
4. I'm ALWAYS late.
5. I never "go to bed."  I have to fall asleep doing some activity like watching TV while laying on the couch or reading or surfing the internet.  "Going to bed" and just laying there waiting to fall asleep just seems like a waste of time to me.  Consequently, I almost always fall asleep on the couch, wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and drag my ass to bed.

Christmas Shopping Hijinx

So last night I was doing a bit of Christmas shopping.  I went to Lowe's to buy a gift for my father.  I went to the garden area outside and found what I wanted.  (I can't name it and possibly spoil the surprise on the off chance my dad reads this.)  They were stacked on those huge metal shelves just slightly above my head.  There was also a cable strung across the front, for what I don't know - I'm guessing for either security or liability.  This thing that I was buying has a reservoir of sorts at the top.  I reached up to pull one down and tipped it forward as I lifted it over the cable and.....WHOOOSH!!  Down came at least a friggin' gallon of nasty-ass water that was full of grass seed or something.  There were bags of grass seed backstocked  on the shelving above that must have come open and spilled down.  (Come to find out later that the water was probably also full of bird shit because all of the other of these items that had grass seed in them were also caked with bird shit from the birds eating the seed.)

The water came down all over my head and right shoulder and spilled down my chest.  It was chilly outside so the water was freezing.  When the water hit me I let out a wheezing moanscream "OOOAAAAHHHOOOOOO!" and bent forward to let the water drip from my hair onto the ground instead of on my body.  I stood there for a minute, bent over and looking at the ground, then started laughing.  I was pretty sure no one had seen me because I hadn't seen anyone else in the garden area, which was really too bad because I'm sure it would have been funny as hell to see.

I didn't really know what the hell to do.  Do I go to the restroom and try to dry off?  My jacket and scarf and shirt were soaked, as was my ENTIRE head.  There were flecks of seed (and bird shit) all over my clothes and in my hair.  In the end I just said fuckit and took my thing up to the front to pay.  Nobody stared at me as I walked through the store, although they all had the "Oh shit there's only 5 days 'til Christmas" frantic looks on their faces so they were probably distracted and not paying any attention to me.  I was a little disappointed by this really.  I wanted somebody to acknowledge that something really funny had just happened and to laugh with me.  Finally I told the cashier about it.  She thought I was trying to log a complaint  and offered to call a manager.  I laughed and tried to explain but she didn't understand.  She wasn't really paying attention anyway though because she kept getting on the intercom and calling for a "Code 50" while I was trying to talk to her.  I'm guessing a "Code 50" is a wet floor cleanup in the garden center. 

Finals Post Mortem

The contents of the end of my semester:

1. Civil Pretrial Advocacy - no final exam; grade was based on a "Trial Notebook" consisting of various kinds of pleadings (documents filed with the court).  Turned in Monday November 21st by 5pm.
2. Commercial Real Estate Transactions - no final exam; grade was based on "Document Notebook" consisting of a promissory note, deed of trust, general warranty deed, personal guaranty, engagement letter, conflicts waiver, opinion letter, sales contract, and a 3-page paper on this book called Tombstones (which was actually a pretty fun read).  Turned in Friday December 2nd by 5pm in to registrar  adjunct secretary  faculty secretary some lady on the seventh floor.
3. Wills, Trusts & Estates - 3hr final exam on November 28th at 6pm.  The exam itself was a piece of trash - there were dozens of typos and poorly crafted questions, which was an insult.  We worked our asses off to learn this stuff and then get some exam that looked like the professor whipped it up in like 5 minutes and didn't even use the spell checker.  Ridiculous.
4. Texas Pretrial Procedure - 3hr exam on 12/5 - 17 legal pages with 37 short answer questions.  Professor was brutal in class (random hard core recitation) but the word on the street was that he made up for it with a very fair exam (which doesn't really mean anything when there's a curve).  Anyway, I know for a fact that I got corn-holed on 2 questions for sure.  One was about visiting judges - what are the types, how many strikes does each party get against them, etc.  I went retarded on that question and probably got no points despite the fact that I knew it was going to be on there and concentrated extra time on it.  The other question was on interpleader, which I totally missed the issue.  I wrote some bullshit about the maximum amount in controversy of a Justice of the Peace Court.
5. Business Planning - 2hrs.  3 essays.  Saturday 12/10 at 9am.  PC (aka "Soon to be Mr. Coussou) and I alternated saying, "I'm fucked!" over and over for a couple of days right before the exam.  But, in the end, I think we both knew the material okay.  Put it this way, I think we could both give you at least 3 types of transactions that were exempt from the reporting requirement under the Securities Act of 1933.
6. Secured Transactions - 3hrs on Monday 12/12 at 6pm.  This was the big one.  My fears were realized:  this was the hardest exam I've taken in law school.  Not because the material was conceptually rigorous, but because my level of preparedness forced me to work EXTREMELY hard in the exam to get the answers.  I developed a serious headache and hand cramps about 1-1/2 hours in.  It really sucked.  Afterwards I took in a serious amount of alcohol (my tab was over fifty bucks before tip, I paid for no one else's drinks and I was just drinking Miller Lite!).  The next day I had a weapons grade hangover, vomited up an orange popsicle and a Clif bar at around 2pm before I started feeling better.

The High Road

When I get ultraconservative, right-wing propaganda busllshit emails about patriotism, immigration or God I just, I just....delete them. What's the use? I could reply with some ascerbic diatribe about ignorance and fear but it would probably just go over their heads; if they read it at all.

Pro-cras-tin-ation Whoa-o!

Things I have done in the last two days to avoid studying Secured Transactions:

1. Wash all of my clothes (and towels)
2. Iron all of them  (t-shirts even...but not the towels, that would be weird)
3. Two words:  Internet porn
4. This
5. Smoked
6. Read ANYTHING other than Article 9 of the UCC
7. Made a Christmas wish list
8. Swiffered my apartment
9. Watched The Real World Austin:  The Sh*&!?*%t They Should Have Shown
10. Watched To Kill A Mockingbird (This actually motivated me for a while)

New Vocation

After taking my Texas Pretrial Procedure final last night I realized that my true calling in life is not to be a practicing attorney or even a judge. No, it's to be a legislator!

Apparently, I'm MUCH better at making up the law than I am at remembering and applying it.