The Law School Transplant - If you don't find me helpful, hopefully you'll find me at least mildly entertaining.

When I fly alone, I am a freak magnet. Undoubtedly, the weirdest, smelliest and/or most annoying person on any given aircraft will be assigned to sit next to me.

And I can see them coming. As the plane fills, I watch people file past me looking for their seats. All normal, tired, impatient travelers. Then I’ll spot the freak. And inevitably, he or she will happily plop down next to me and subject me to his or her freakiness for the next 2 – 4 hours.

Case-in-point #1: The Snuggler

I was flying up to Rochester a few years ago to visit some friends and do some work for a former professor. Once I got to Rochester, I had a 2 hour drive ahead of me. My flight, originally scheduled to leave at 10, was delayed until midnight. So that meant that I would reach my ultimate destination at 4 a.m., at the earliest.

I get on the plane, find my seat, and lean against the window, trying to sleep. My seat mate, a rather large man, clumsily hauls his crap into the seat and plops down next to me. He then proceeds to remove a very large Mexican blanket from his bag. How it fit in there, I will never know.

Freak #1: You scared?
Me, visibly annoyed: No. I’m just tired, and I just want to get to Rochester.
Freak #1: Oh.
[Long Pause]
Freak #1: Want some covers?
Me: NO.

During the flight I put on my headphones and managed to sleep a bit. I woke up when we were descending. It was raining and I knew we were going to have bumpy landing.

Freak #1, leaning over me, peering out the window: Is that LIGHTNING?
Me: No. It’s the light on the end of the wing reflecting back into the window.
Freak #1: Oh.

Case-in-point #2: The Drunkard

I used to fly standby on Delta pretty often, which meant I was issued the very last tickets on the plane and always ended up in the shit seats. This was no exception.

I got my seat, and thought I might be lucky enough to have a seat to myself for this particular flight. No dice.

About four seconds before the cabin door closed, Freak #2 comes rolling down the aisle of the plane, headed right towards me. He was dressed in a basketball jersey and shorts, and his hair was all greasy and nasty. I was seriously convinced he had rolled out of bed and onto the plane.

The guy sits down next to me, and while his appearance was slightly disconcerting, I didn’t think anything of it. Until I realized he smelled like a distillery, that is.

Freak #2 apparently worked on an offshore oil rig somewhere down in the Gulf of Mexico, and on his few days off, had flown to visit some friends and drank the entire time. Which I could have figured out even if he hadn’t told me.

I essentially spent the entire flight facing the window because this dude smelled so bad. Alcohol was seeping out of his pores, and it’s quite likely he’d tried to cure his hangover that morning by continuing to drink.

Let me tell you, it’s fun times flying for two hours with your nose pressed against a tiny airplane window.

In any case, there are plenty more freak stories I have stored away. I’ll try to think of more and post them later.

Hold the phones. I’m sitting in Media Law and the ditzy, hapless victim of the professor’s Socratic questioning cited as a basis of her reasoning John Grisham’s A Time to Kill. Except she didn’t even really know the name of the book; she just referred to it as “some John Grisham book” (and I only figured out which book it was because of her brief and oblique description of the plot).

Let me repeat this so you can fully absorb it: A law student just cited John Grisham to establish a legal principle.

Perhaps she is the same person who referenced the television show “ER” in Health Care Law a few weeks ago as the basis for her beliefs about how hospital emergency rooms operate.

What world am I living in? Someone help me out here. Maybe if I write “Because ‘Law & Order’ told me so,” on the bar exam, they’ll accept the answer and I’ll pass. Or perhaps if I start throwing out legal non sequiturs in everyday conversation, people will think I’m smart and important.

Good grief.

On Saturday, the Terrorists and I, Steph from the Terrorist message board and Daisy, Mer and my furry niece and nephew, along with my dad and Triple D, participated in Walk 4 PAWS, a fundraiser for a local organization that provides low-cost spays and neuters for animals in the local area.

Too bad they don’t spay and neuter fratties and sorostitutes.

Here are some photographic highlights:

T. Min. says, “Get the camera out of my face and kindly fuck off.”

Terrorists ready to roll:

T. Max and his new girlfriend, Daisy. Too bad T. Max no longer has his man-bits:

Triple D, fascinated by something shiny, no doubt:

Triple D checking out his shrunekn doppelganger:

Don’t mind us. We’re just taking over your neighborhood:

Marching towards world domination. Be very afraid:

Special Note: Thanks to my dad’s friend Jim for the awesome pictures!

A California judge dismissed Britney Spears’ defamation lawsuit against a weekly celebrity rag because rumors that Britney and K.Fed made a sex tape are not defamatory as a matter of law.

The judge told Britney that she had “put her modern sexuality squarely, and profitably, before the public eye.”

In other words, Britney, you’re a highly paid hooker. Which therefore makes you libel-proof when people talk about how you get down and dirty under the sheets. Or in front of a video camera.

I thought most celebrities had learned a lesson after the Pam-and-Tommy fiasco, but apparently Britney has surprised us yet again with her stunning idiocy. Well played, Britney, well played.

%*#(@#(@(#!!!!

We lost. Again. That makes us 3-4 in our conference. Granted, it’s a tough conference, but last year we finished the regular season with two losses and proceeded to steamroll over our opponents in the conference championship to secure a BCS bowl game.

At least my undergrad alma mater won today, beating the mighty Dartmouth Big Green, 28-25. Despite the fact that watching them play football is what I would envision Special Olympics football to be.

We are unlikely to secure any bowl game this year, and if by some miracle we do, it will be some crap ass bowl like the Cereal Bowl or the Toilet Bowl.

And the value of my degree will plummet forthwith. Because everyone knows that in the South, your football team’s success factors proportionately into your law school’s USNWR ranking. Obvs.

Well, ladies (and apparently gentlemen, too)… after much speculation, it turns out, Doogie Howser, M.D. is, in fact, gay.

It undoubtedly breaks many twenty-something women’s hearts, as they swooned over Doogie as little girls.

I mean, who can resist a 16-year-old doctor who keeps a journal on a computer that still runs MS-DOS?

Yeah, me either.

Yesterday the Director of Student Affairs arranged for the Director of a Very Important Group That Lets Me Into the Bar but Not Without a Lot of Hassle to pay a visit to the law school and very clearly and concisely explain how the character and fitness portion of the bar application involves an airing of all our dirty laundry and a raping of our personal histories, but only after we pay an exorbitant sum of money for this privilege, of course.

I am quite glad they had this meeting. Otherwise I wouldn’t be aware of the fact that I have to order 2 fingerprint cards from the Bar (why an index card won’t do, I don’t know), order a copy of my driving record from the DMV, order a copy of my credit report, tally up all of my outstanding student loans (and try to refrain from crying in the process), contact five references to let them know the Bar will be badgering them for information (and bribe them to keep quiet), and try to remember every place I have ever lived and every employer I have ever worked for. Oh, and I have to write a big, fat check go to the bank to get a big, fat money order to send along with it. After I get the whole thing notarized, of course.

Because I have nothing better to do between now and December 6th. The very thought of having to do all this makes me want to a) drink heavily, b) cry and c) reconsider my choice of profession.

And I don’t really have a whole lot to hide. I’m just glad I’ve never been married, divorced, arrested, bankrupt, caught having sex with an animal, found drunk in a ditch, institutionalized, fired from a job or deported. Thank God for small favors, right?

You know you’ve made it in the blogging world when someone else links to your blog.

Lo and behold, E. Spat has linked me. Thanks, E. Spat!

Remember how I said a while back that I am a walking calamity? Well, not wanting to let anyone down, I struck again last night.

Whilst using a big butcher knife from the dollar store, I managed to hack a pretty deep gash in my fingertip and into my fingernail. In the midst of all my panicking and squawking and flailing, I managed to fling blood all over the dining room and the guest bathroom as well. After I calmed down and stopped paintng the walls red, my first thought was, “Knives from the dollar store aren’t supposed to cut people!” Guess it showed me.

Had I gone to the hospital, the doctors would have probably obliged and put a stitch or two in my finger, for the bargain price of my emergency room co-pay of $75. But this whole incident happened after midnight, and so sitting in the ER waiting room at College Town Regional Medical Center with all the alcohol-poisoned freshmen was not my idea of a fun Saturday night. I also have a weird thing about wanting to be stitched up by plastic surgeons because I harbor some sort of delusion that it would make me scar less severely. And I seriously doubt CTRMC has a plastic surgeon on duty at midnight on a Saturday.

Since I managed to get the bleeding to stop and ghetto-rigged a gauze bandage, I figured I could wait until Monday when I could go to the student health center on campus for free. Ha, insurance schminsurance.

Early this morning, I headed to CVS for better bandaging supplies. I was right proud of the job I did closing and taping and gauzing my finger up. “LST,” I thought to myself, “Other than the fact that you almost puked at the sight of your own finger laid open and then thought that holding it under running water would somehow stop the bleeding, medical school may actually have been your calling.”

Unfortunately, my fantastic intentions for catching up on my Media Law outline this weekend were stymied, as my typing skills have slowed to the speed of molasses. Though somehow I still managed to blog. Hm.

So, I am signed up for my first. 5K. ever. This is both exciting and frightening, seeing as how I am the girl who runs a mile and a half and wants to die afterwards.

The run is December 23rd, which gives me almost exactly two months to improve both my time and my endurance. I’m not a naturally talented runner, so it will be a challenge for me. My dad and brother are also running with me. My brother, the AFA Beast, will probably finish in under 25 minutes. My dad and I will eat his dust and finish 15 minutes later.

I ran 2 miles on the track yesterday, so I’m feeling pretty good about my prospects of finishing without having to stop or walk along the way.

It will also help me shed some of the extra pounds I’ve been carrying so that I can get back to my pre-law school self. It’s all a part of bringing out the alter ego.

Wish me luck, y’all!