back to the routine

Back in Boston after a fabulous vacay. Spent the first half in Chicago then went to the Bay area (CA) last Weds and spent 2 days with Sarah and then the rest of the weekend with my aunts. Had a fabulous time. Got back to Chicago last night and just this morning (ok, about an hour ago) got back to Boston. Phew. That's a lot of time changes in not a lot of days. And now I have a TON of work to catch up on (didn't miss any classes but have lots due this week and a final next -- yikes!).

tension mounts

The Sox game got way too intense (tied 5-5 at the bottom of the ninth, Astros are at bat) so I came here to take my mind off the stress.

It's been a weird day. Example: I was driving around and I turned on Q101 which, if you've lived in Chicago you know is the alternative station, and they were playing Blues Traveller (Runaround in case you care). Now this kind of music is on The Mix and maybe even Kiss but not Q101... It was like I was in an alternate universe or something.

I go to California tomorrow -- YAY!! 2 days with Sarah then the weekend with family. Unfortunately I have to bring a bunch of work with me (stupid MPRE that I have to take right when I get back to Boston) but it'll be nice all the same :)

so tired

I am so exhausted and there is just no good reason for it! I've been at home, mostly doing nothing, yet I feel barely functional! Weekend was good though. Here's a quick runthrough:

On Saturday morning I helped a scholarship program my dad is involved with interview 8th graders (it's high school scholarships) which was a lot of fun. These kids have so much more poise than I did at that age! Saturday night I went out with Lisa and caught up. It was nice to see her and so nice to get away from my family for a while! Sunday I went to brunch with Bryan and spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. Today was spent with my grandmother. We went to lunch at a restaurant at the Glen and then went to see In Her Shoes -- the one with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette. Dumb but cute.

The Glen is such a strange place. It's where the Glenview Naval station was and now that the base is gone it's like a little town that has arisen from nowhere. There's houses and stores and restaurants and a movie theater and it's just weird because none of this stuff was there when I was in high school (or even college).

home sweet home?

Well, I made it back to Glencoe safely. No thanks to the MBTA this morning as the T was having some issues but I still made it to the airport in plenty of time. Flight was terribly bumpy but I made it without losing my lunch...
Mom picked me up and we stopped at CostCo on the way home for a few things, then I spent most of the afternoon doing nothing as I was car-less. Good dinner with the family though and went to see my grandmother and aunt after dinner.
I expect this to be a thoroughly boring week so if you're in town, please call me or email me or something and do something with me so that I can get out of the house...

seasons of love

OMG, just saw a commercial for the Rent movie. It's not out for another month (Nov. 23 actually) but SO EXCITED!!!

In other news, going home tomorrow. I'll be in Glencoe until next Weds, when I head out to the bay area to see Sarah and some family. YAY a whole week without school :)

Whew, small burst of a good mood there...

stupid cassie...

Ugh. Sometimes I just feel so stupid that I can't stand myself. Like today. It all started when I made my Thanksgiving travel plans a month ago. Thinking ahead, got a pretty good price. Thought it was all done. So imagine my surprise when I got an email from my dad asking why I was planning to return to Boston on the morning of Thanksgiving instead of the following Monday... SHIT. While this could have been the fault of some computer somewhere, most likely it was my own human error. So, after talking for a while to a woman who didn't speak English, doing some computer research, and talking then to a nicer woman who did speak English, I was able to fix the problem. But only after spending an additional 200 bucks to do it. That's $200 that I don't have... And now, in addition to being out $200, I just feel so stupid!
Now I'm going to go check my itineraries for my upcoming travel home and to SF so that I can make sure I didn't fuck them up too...

it's only october...

If I'm not mistaken (and I'm not) Christmas is not for more than 2 months. So then WHY am I already seeing Christmas commercials on tv and Christmas merchandise in stores (e.g. Urban Outfitters...)??? Hello -- we haven't even hit Halloween yet! I love Christmas and the holiday season but I really can't be so into it in October...

Totally different thought: I LOVE the movie Grease. I think I need to own it. It's been on tv a few times recently and is on again tonight and it just makes me happy.

Finally, the rain needs to stop. It has been fully one week since we've seen the sun. Tonight it was raining so hard that my gore-tex raincoat didn't even make a dent in keeping me dry. By the time I got home from dinner in Harvard Square I was soaked through. I might go crazy, between the knee-deep puddles, the wind, and the rain rain rain..

why?

There are many many things about life that I don't understand. But here's the one that really gets me: why is it that on the days when you're SO tired all day that you have trouble functioning, you find yourself full of energy when it's time for bed?? So frustrating!

stating the obvious

So clearly if you know me (and if you don't know me I'm not sure why you're reading this), you know that I'm a very moody person. That might be an understatement. Anyway, I try to reign it in a bit because I know it's not an attractive trait of mine, but sometimes I just can't help it. I get into these funks where I inexplicably cannot stand to be with any member of the human race, including myself. This is a frustrating occurence because while I'm not going to hang out with other people and impose my dark cloud on them, I have trouble being by myself when I'm in one of these moods because I just drive myself crazy. Thankfully, this doesn't happen very frequently anymore. Unfortunately, though, when it does happen I feel particularly ill-prepared to deal with it because I'm not used to it. This additional frustration does not really help bring me back out of my funk. Grrr. I just want to feel normal again.
Oh, and it's very cold today. I could definitely feel winter in the wind.

rain

It's raining. It's been raining since Friday night. It's supposed to keep raining every day for at least the next week. I don't like rain. I don't mind it when it's a thunderstorm at night or when it's warm outside but rain here, in the cold, all the time stinks. Aside from the general unpleasantness of rain when it's cold outside and one has to walk everywhere, there's the significant drainage problem in the greater Boston area that creates lake-sized puddles at every intersection. All hopes of keeping pants-legs dry are dashed. And don't even get me started on my shrinking levels of motivation to do ANYTHING when it's so gray out..

Legally Blonde

I just watched Legally Blonde for the first time since I've been in law school (having seen it about 100 times pre-HLS). While I still love it and think that parts of it ring oh-so-true, it's much harder to watch now. Instead of laughing at it and enjoying it for what it is, my brain insists on picking out the parts of the movie that bear no resemblance to real life at Harvard Law and criticizing them, which is ridiculous because it's just a movie, but I can't help it. Still a good movie but I don't think I'll be watching it again until after I graduate.

On a different note, went apple picking with Emily and Silpa yesterday. Tons of fun. We went to an orchard in Contoocook, New Hampshire (love the name!) and it was really nice to get out of Cambridge and out of Massachusetts altogether. Even after giving a lot of apples to Jamie, I still have more apples than I know what to do with! Oh well. My only question is this: why did it take me until my third year of law school to make friends? Law school could have been so much more bearable for the past two years...

So, while I'm stuck sitting in the Hark doing nothing because the painters are in my apartment (thus preventing me from napping), I thought I'd let you know all the random things that I've thought about in the past day or so. Enjoy!
1. Life is so random. Yesterday, while walking from Starbucks in the Square back to campus, I ran into my RA from freshman year of college. As if it's not weird enough to run into CC people here (which it sort of is), she's not even from the US making it even less likely that I'd see her. SO bizarre! She's at Harvard's divinity school. Crazy!
2. I have a real problem paying attention in class. Really it's just one of my classes that poses this problem and I think it's because I know I won't have to take a final in it. I'm writing my 3L paper in conjunction with the course and this professor lets you write a paper instead of the final so no final for Cassie. This greatly disincentivizes me to pay attention in class because it's just not important to any end cause (beyond the fact that it's interesting). But it's hard to be interested in anything without external motivation for 2 hours at 8:15 in the morning...
3. Television. What a life sucker, but I love it. I have digital cable and my new favorite channel is the Style network. All the makeover shows -- wonderful! I think it would be so fun to be on one (well, some of them. don't care to be on "The Look for Less"). I'm sad that I can't be watching tv now in fact.
4. Most amusing discovery ever: the "missed connections" on Craigslist. Seriously... If I saw a hot guy on the subway, why would I expect that A) he would have noticed me and then B) checked on Craigslist "missed connections" AND C) recognized himself or me in the description? Do people actually find each other this way?? Oh well, another useful waste of time.
5. Celeb goss -- WAY too much! So much going on in the celeb world right now, I might have to end my abstinence from People and US Weekly! I mean, Nick and Jess breaking up is pretty big if it's actually happening but the real news is TomKat's upcoming baby. Aside fromt he fact that I think that the whole TomKat thing is totally wrong to begin with, now they're subjecting a third person to their insanity... And is this child going to be raised Christian Scientist? Think Katie Holmes will rethink the Christian Scientist thing when it means she can't have any pain meds during birth?? (I mean, I know people do it all the time, but come on, we're talking about Joey from DC). I miss the old Katie Holmes... OK, really I just miss Dawson's Creek...
That's probably enough from me. Frankly, I'd be impressed if anyone kept reading this far :)

The Music in Me

So I was watching Even Stevens the other day (yes, I'm 24 and I still enjoy the Disney channel... your point?), and anyway it was the episode where Ren is doing Karaoke in secret to blow off steam and then Louis shows her whole family and they end the episode doing Karaoke together to "I've Got the Music In Me." Anyway, it's that last bit that got me thinking about the real significance of music in my life. I'm not a musician, and I won't even say that my musical tastes go very deep -- I'm pretty mainstream. But still, the power of music is undeniable. Hearing a song can instantly change my mood and my outlook on life to reflect my feelings about that song. In addition to the music itself, which is definitely powerful, I think that a big part of it for me is power of music to trigger other memories and to transplant you to a different time in your life. For example, while I have many associatoins with the song, "I Will Survive," it brings me back (mentally) to being i ncollege at DG formals singing (a revised version) at the top of our lungs. Certain other songs bring me back to my childhood or to camp or to various people in my life. And I think that the power of a song to bring you back to that happier place is incredible . Of course, sometimes songs bring you to sad places, but as time passes and wounds, some of those places become happy again.
I don't know if any of this makes any sense outside of my head but it was a comforting thought to me. And in case you were wondering, I've been listening to a lot of classic rock lately.

ohhhh

No more drinking for a really really really long time. Damn...

Disappointment

There isn't much that happens in my life that a good burrito bowl from Chipotle (or, Qdoba when the nearest Chipotle is hundreds of miles away) and some retail therapy can't cure. So why don't I feel any better?
Long story short: my brother is at home for the next month. This alone isn't a huge issue. It's the why and the how it affects me. Let's just say that the why isn't a very good reason and that I'm disappointed in him, which in itself surprises me because I wasn't aware that I had any expectations or standards when it came to my brother. I guess I was wrong, apparently I do. More frustrating to me, though, is that he'll be there when I'm there and we don't do well when we're under the same roof. I was really looking forward to going home in three weeks and just spending some quality time with my parents before heading to Cali to visit Sarah and my family out there but apparently I get to spend quality time with my brother too. I'm not going to let this ruin my vacation, but it's certainly had an impact in how much I was looking forward to it.
I just hate who I am when he's around. We get along fine when we're on opposite sides of the country, but put us in the same house and it's like we become 5 years old again -- jealous, petty, and obnoxious. But when I try to control it and be the bigger person, I just build up so much anger that the result really isn't any better. I don't want to be this way -- it drives me crazy to see myself turn into this. And really, this is so selfish of me to be angry with him for being home because it will ruin my time. There are a million better reasons to be angry, upset, disappointed, whatever but this is the one that I feel. And I hate that too. Ugh, this is so complicated, no wonder the Qdoba and new gym clothes I bought didn't help... Obviously this was too big of a problem for Qdoba -- needed the real deal (chipotle)... *sigh*
I'm going out tonight and I don't like to drink when I'm upset -- it's a recipe for disaster -- but I'm going to try not to let this stand in my way of having a good night.