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I had an interview after class on Friday, and decided that the "smart" thing to do would be to wear my last pair of disposable contacts, so that I could look my best for it. I decided on contacts despite knowing that one of them was a wee bit uncomfortable to wear. I put them in and despite the discomfort, my eyes showed no sign of redness, even after a few hours. So I trotted off to school.

Waiting at the bus stop, I suddenly felt burning. My eyes also immediately became highly sensitive to the light. I ignored this. When I got to school, I found a friend and asked her if my eye looked red. No, looks fine. So I continued to ignore the increasing pain. 20 minutes into my class there the pain had become a bit overwhelming. It had also done strange things to my sinus, causing me to sniffle. The eye in pain was also quite teary so I'm sure that at this point I effectively looked like I was crying. I soon realized there was no way I could keep the contact in any longer. I quietly excused myself from class and ran to the bathroom to pull the contact out. As soon as I did, all of the blood in my body rushed into that eye, at least that's what it looked like in the mirror. There was quite a bit of burning involved as well, and the sinus problem only intensified. This was not me looking my best for the interview.

When class ended, people around me looked concerned. They tried to make it sound like it wasn't so bad, but gave up quickly. I now had 50 minutes until my interview. I ran to Eckerd's and grilled the Pharmacist for the best eye drop to take the red out without aggravating whatever scratch I had given myself. It did the trick, and despite the pain, me eye suddenly looked brand new. I couldn't stop the blinking, but at least the red was out. The sinus problem went away with it as well.

By the time I got to the interview, the pain had subsided. I had worn myself out, but at least my eye looked okay. I was, however, a lot more dazed than I would have liked to have been during an interview. And maybe ten minutes after getting out of the interview, the pain came back. Stupid pain. By the time I got home, my eye had had enough. I tried to keep it shut and tried not rubbing it, with limited results.

The next day I could barely keep the thing open. So I tested out Student Health. They said they couldn't do anything and gave me an eye patch. Then they sent me to the emergency room. At the emergency room, three doctors examined my eye five times. examining my eye involves numbing it, dyeing it, dilating it, shining very bright lights in both white and blue straight into it, and sticking scary foam things on it. I do not like people touching my eye. I do not like scary foam things touching my eye. I do not like lights shined into my eye. In the end, they told me I had scratched my eye and gave me three kinds of medicine to deal with pain and dilation. They told me to come back on Monday, but I refuse. I will not subject myself to their barbarism again.

As a result of my decision to wear contacts to the interview, my eyesight remained blurry throughout the weekend. It is a little better now, but really only if I read with one eye shut. This feels silly and causes those around me to eye me with suspicion.
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My 10-year reunion was sometime over the last weekend. Three friends wrote to tell me about it or share pictures. Prior to Thanksgiving, I was quite staunchly against going, as any friends who I would be interested in seeing are people I'm still in touch with. Of course, now that I'm over here, it would certainly have been nice to see some of them. I caught little glimpses of friends I miss in several pictures, as well as many who I've forgotten over the years. I'm therefore in favor of going to the next one. I'm guessing that will occur in another ten years?

The weekend has given me time to reflect on a few things:
  • I've been stubbornly against maintaining friendships with certain people from high school because of tiny, insignificant things that occurred that are more than forgivable. I think that tradition more than anything else has kept me from changing my attitude over these people. It's a shame, as they were/are great people. I hear about them from time to time and, over the years, I've regretted my actions back then.

  • I've also slipped into some sort of fiercely crazy anti-social behavior in the past five years. I'm not sure how it happened, but it's a terrible situation to be in, and it's left me sort of unable to communicate effectively with new people. Small talk is impossible for me. I have no idea how to do it. It isn't that I don't like interacting with people, but I find it so difficult it, that I avoid it, and the more I avoid it, the more difficult it becomes. Vicious cycle. This will be the biggest New Year's resolution for me: try to become a friendly, good person.

  • Another stubborn habit of mine is a hatred of holidays, especially Christmas. I go into my typical "stupid mass consumer scam" mode and have trouble enjoying it for what it is. Elaine has made me promise that I will keep an open mind and try to enjoy Christmas with her this year, and so I've been doing that. Admittedly, it's having some sort of effect. It takes too much energy to actively hate Christmas, and it's not good for my mood. The tree is nice, and finding ways to think about making other people happy is good for my soul.

Finals start in about a week. I have therefore been having nightmares for about two weeks now. I wake up anxious all night. I do not like this. High stress is not good for me. What does that say about my choice of career? I'm certainly happy that there are a ton of options for someone with a law degree. I don't think lawyering is an ideal situation for me.
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Sometimes I really miss California.
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Elaine and I got up extra early this morning so that we could get our voting out of the way and possibly avoid some sort of evening rush. The polls are not open in PA for as long as they are in CA, not sure why. They also don't hand out "I voted" stickers. They also haven't updated their voting machines in a long, long time. I've never used a lever system to vote before. It was a huge wall of levers that looked like it came out of some mad scientist film.

We were fifth and sixth in line to vote, and in that period of time, one of the two voting machines committed suicide. One of two. Within five minutes of the poll opening. Yes, I'm glad we voted in the morning. There may have been no machines left by nightfall (which, by the way, is now very early in the evning).

There was a relatively large group of MoveOn people right outside the polls, all complete with big Kerry signs. I thought there was a rule against signage so close to polls. Perhaps that rule only applies in California.

I don't want to worry about the outcome of the election. I will assume the worst and try not to think about it too much.
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My back is not treating me well today. After three nights of successfuly sleeping on the couch to accomodate my parents, I woke up the morning of the fourth couch visit to find that standing and sitting are not easy tasks. My back did not quite go out, but it's sort of teetering on the brink of immobility. There's definitely a nerve caught in there, but I think that if I can get the swelling down a bit, I should be fine. Of course, this means that I can't sit in class today which scares me, as this is one of my big days, and I've never missed Legal Process or Criminal Law.

My parents left this morning. I cried. It does seem that the farther away I am from them, the more I love them. Funny how distance does that to people.
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Mondays are the worst when the weekends are not relaxing.

Of course, just because it wasn't relaxing doesn't mean it wasn't good. On Friday night the family and Elaine and I went downtown to see La Traviata. As always happens whenever we go somewhere new in Pittsburgh, we got lost and ended up on a bridge out of town (this happened on the way home as well). But we're getting used to that, and it's just becoming funny that driving here involves no sense of logic. The opera was also amazingly done and beautifully sung. The theater is gorgeous.

We spent much of Saturday in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Four hours later we needed to take a break from walking and not eating. Joe Mama's = Mmmmmmm.

We also spent a large portion of the weekend house-shopping. I have no money, so I have no real stake in such a matter, but my parents are interested in buying a house both as an investment and as a way to get me residency in Pennsylvania for school purposes, as the Pennsylvania School Board doesn't believe that any out-of-state people would actually WANT to remain here after graduating. You really have to prove it to them, and one way to do that is to buy a house. Apparently if you can pop out some kids and stick them in school here, that helps a lot, but that's not going to happen. Anyway, Elaine is also going to be a part of this house-buying deal so the next few weeks/months should be interesting in that regard. Nothing is for certain but it's certainly an attractive idea to own a house. In California there's just no way someone starting out could ever afford a house. It's nice to know that in other parts of the country people have a shot at home ownership without having to make at least $80-90K a year.

Sunday was, of course, spent in the library. Stupid library. This morning is being spent in the library as well. It's a good thing they've made this place pretty-looking. I'm now even more glad that I didn't go to McGeorge, which had hands-down the ugliest library I have ever set foot in. It's sad that that was THE reason I didn't go there, but I knew I would be spending too much time there, so aesthetics became of great importance.

In other news, my cat peed on my new winter coat. You may remember that a week ago he peed on the bed. He doesn't normally do things like this, and I don't know whether he's upset about something or whether he has some sort of bladder infection. I'm not happy about my coat, but I feel bad for the poor little guy. If he's peeing on things then there's something very wrong.
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It will be raining in nine out of the next ten days here. Goodbye, sun.

All is made better, though, with the arrival of Peet's coffee, all the way from gorgeous San Francisco. This morning's coffee was definitely the best I've had in a few months.

Usually I'm at school by now, but I'm not even dressed and ready yet. I still have two hours before class starts, but there are some days that are near-impossible to start on proper footing. I attribute it to too many crazy dreams. I attended class in them already. I defy anyone who persistently calls me disciplined.

Planned events for when my parents get here:
- La Traviata on Friday night
- visit Fallingwater on Saturday
- maybe the Carnegie museums after class on Friday

Okay, I've run out of ideas.
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I don't like Mondays
It was near impossible get out of bed this morning. The difficulty of facing another week was multiplied by the knowledge that I have not one but two hours of Civil Procedure today.

Elaine and I switched the two bedrooms so that what was formerly the study is now the bedroom and ive versa. It was necessary because the room we were using as a bedroom, despite its large size, is not only the coldest but also the loudest room in the house. The furnace is located there, and somehow cold air seeps in from that very spot. Warmth is necessary.

Of course, that also means that the litter box was moved, and my cat apparently has short-term memory loss. I spotted him sniffing around where the litter box used to be, and wondered why he looked so confused and agitated about it. So we showed him again where the litterbox was, only to find that he had already left a puddle of joy on the bed. Happy Monday.
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Every now and then, I really do get a rush of love for the notion of the law. Yes, I'm often very frustrated with the asinine rules these judges come up with in order to decide cases. In many ways the law is a ridiculous and futile attempt to assign a set of rules to figure out how everyone should act in all situations. Dealing with such a wide range of people with a wide range of cultures and habits makes this effort silly. This whole "reasonably prudent person" test that we keep applying is really starting to show its limits.

But I digress. My original point was that I love it again. Studying for the sake of studying is much more rewarding than studying in an attempt to know all of the answers to potential questions the professor might nail on me. Must try to keep this in mind while I'm studying.
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Much to my dismay, I've discovered that I left the plug for my laptop at home. This means I will be conserving the battery power on it and hoping it will last the next 8 hours. Right. I'm making up for two hours right now by spending it in the computer lab. At least there are windows here.

Every day I think about how much I'm spending on law school, and how bad that will make it if I end up hating life as a lawyer. Anyone who's been through law school tells me that law school is great, but being a lawyer sucks. I didn't bother to give much thought to it as I was going through the process of applying and readying myself, but now that I'm here... it's this constant nagging thought.

We had "Vote for your favorite Supreme Court Justice" yesterday. I didn't see all the results, but from the ones that had been tallied, Scalia won by a long shot. Scalia. The man has no soul.

Or maybe I'm just worried about the impending winter cold that's already started. 39 degrees when I left the house this morning.
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