random anecdotes

I was going to write a post about my birthday extravaganza, but I’m too lazy.

Time was 2003 and I was starting my senior year at UT. For on-campus parking, Texas had developed a rather complex code to show your type of contract: the color of your parking sticker showed the type of permit (residential, commuter, motorcycle, etc.) while the shape showed the time period (Fall 2003, 12 month 2003-2004). Ok, so it wasn’t a complicated code, but you get my point. My senior year, I had a one semester commuter contract so that I wouldn’t have to pay all of it up front.

That year, all of the commuter permits were a lovely purple color. The fall semester permits, unfortunately, were an upside-down triangle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a supporter of gay rights (I think the Defense of Marriage Act violates the 14th Amendment), but I’m not so big on gay pride. Needless to say, it was awkward at best driving to mass with an upside down purple triangle on my back window. They may as well have given me a rainbow sticker and a large sign that said, “If I’m parked at my parent’s house in Belton, please egg me.” I thought about cutting off the edges to make a purple hexagon, but that would either (1) get me in trouble with the parking Nazis at UT or (2) signal an affection for animals. I’ll never know why some low level parking official thought it would be funny to give so many cars pride stickers, but then again you’ll never know why I wrote such a long, dull post.

In other news, I finally received by Administrative Law book in the mail yesterday. I didn’t actually receive it so much as I went to the post office and claimed it. Apparently, it had been sitting there undelivered for two friggin’ weeks. I finally received a notice that my Amazon.com order arrived (I bought myself GTA: Vice City for my birthday with a gift certificate). When I went down to the post office with my “hey you have my stuff” card, they gave me my book. While I’m happy to have my book, I now seriously doubt that I’ll get my video game. I love the post office.

Our neighbors: Catherina O’Leary

Yesterday I came home from school and, exhausted lay semi-conscious on the couch until the wife got off work. I managed to force myself to stay awake and talk to her until 10:30ish (a good hour later than I’d hoped). We’re laying in bed, almost asleep when we start to faintly smell smoke. This gets a bit stronger, so I walk around outside to see if the building is on fire. I didn’t see a fire, so I came back in; I couldn’t let myself go to sleep, however, because I needed to gauge whether I’m getting carbon monoxide poisoning.

The smoke gradually got thicker until it was hard to see across our apartment due to the haze. It became harder to breath, so we finally called the fire department at 2:30 am (three and a half hours after it all started). They arrived very quickly and discovered the source of the smoke: our upstairs neighbors (the ones on whom we’ve called the police four times due to their blaring Tejano music) kitchen had caught on fire and filled up our apartment with smoke. Now it’s 2:45, I’m exhausted but seriously doubt that I’ll be able to fall back asleep. Thank God I don’t have class until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The only good part about the evening was having the pleasure of getting the Pasadena Fire Department to wake up the infernal upstairs tenants. I can’t imagine their relief when they saw “PFD” and not “INS” on the man at their door.

I like backpacks?

Has anyone seen the Target back-to-school commercial with none other than Sir Mix-A-Lot rapping about how much he likes the new line of backpacks? I realize that the old school hip-hop artists (one would now scarcely call any of it rap) have fallen on hard times ever since 1992, but show some self-respect. The man made a contribution to Americana, and now he’s peddling tripe for a slightly upscale Wal-Mart.

When a musician ceases to be popular, he has several options to keep his dignity. The most virtuous is for the musician to sit back, satisfied with his fifteen minutes of fame and go back to his life. I don’t recall Billy Ray Cyrus dragging on his career too long after it ended (I could be wrong, I haven’t paid much attention to the mulleted one). The next option is to take some time off and come back. The artist can continue touring despite the fact that no one likes them. See, e.g. Mötley Crüe; Lynard Skinnard. The artist can descend into political activism like Harry Belafonte (whom, apropos, even Slate.com said “[r]eal liberals should condemn” as a racist).

Shunning all of the options, Sir Mix-A-Lot went down the path of David Cassidy; he became a two-bit hack, shilling for some overpriced, POS consumer product.

It’s a shame to lose such a talented, visionary musician as Sir Mix-A-Lot (p/k/a Anthony Ray).

I know that I've misspelled various things, so have fun with it.

Killing a bug the old fashioned way

The other day the wife was cleaning and came across a small roach. Her immediate reaction was to scream like a girl (appropriately so) and run away. Upon further reflection, she decided to take the initiative and take the fight to the enemy. Naturally, she needed a weapon. She didn’t use her natural defense, the foot; she didn’t even take off her shoe and smack it. She fell back and looked for something with which to kill the retched bug. She forewent the Raid (I guess it wasn’t a Kurdish roach or she would have used the chemical weapon). Eventually, she used the traditional anti-roach weapon; the one used by our ancestors: the hammer. Fearing the strong defenses of the roach, she apparently though that only a nine inch, stainless steel claw hammer could smite the bug.

Naturally, she missed with her first swing. The roach ran under a sheet of paper, and Lauren thought it would be fun to start pummeling the entire sheet. She’s moderately sure that won the battle, though I don’t want to think of how many divots she put in the floor; it probably looks like central France circa 1916. I’m just glad the hammer was closer than the guns.

Let's Hear it for Fall 2005

Back to school
Back to school
To show dad that I’m not a fool
I’ve got my lunch box and boots tied tight
Hope I don’t get in a fight
Back to school
Back to school

It looks like I’ll treat this semester like the last two: I haven’t done all of my assignments yet, so I’ll have to get to school very early tomorrow to read for Evidence and Property II. I still haven’t even bought all of my case books. This should be fun.

What is wrong with the Financial Aid Office? Part II

I apologize for all of the sequel posts, but here goes.

I called the Fin Aid Office today to see if I could get the lowered scholarship question taken care of. I couldn’t even discuss the matter, however, as they claim to have no record of me accepting the award at all. For the record, I have the email from the office acknowledging that they received my award.

This could be bad, as the woman had to specifically tell me that, while they’re getting this straightened out, I’ll “still be able to go to classes and everything.” No, I don’t think I can do “everything” without a financial aid award. I can’t pay rent at my apartment and I certainly can’t move into another. Also, I’m sure there are deadlines for getting a Stafford loan payout and awarding scholarship dollars. How can they be so catastrophically stupid as to do this? They seem to have abandoned Operation Screw Sam Out of a Grand and moved into Operation Leave Sam and his Lovely Wife Pennyless and Out in the Cold.

I’m pretty sure they can write me off as a future contributing alumnis. If this isn’t fixed, they can consider me a future plaintiff (I think I’d waint until after graduation to file, however).

Driving in Fallujah

I’ve often complained about Pasadena drivers; they weave, follow too closely, run red lights – all without insurance. Yesterday the wife and I were the second car stopped in the turning lane at a light on a very busy intersection. The arrow turned green and the woman in front of us didn’t go for a good two seconds; she was fiddling with the infant in the passenger seat. She finally goes – again, two seconds after the light turned green – and some big pick-up truck plows into her, scarcely even paying attention to brake. He caved in the woman’s driver side door, shattered her window and God knows what else. We left when the guy got out of his truck to help and we saw that all three people were moving around. I’m just glad she got to the light ahead of us; I don’t want to sue if it means getting side-swiped.

What really sucks is that the woman, having a baby and an old car likely can’t afford to waint for suit; she’ll probably have to snap-up the first offer the guy’s insurance company throws at her. She get a token value for her car (since it was barely worth $500 at the time) and probably nothing for her medical costs. If she has the misfortune of seeking more money, the defense will tie the case up procedurally for months, leaving the woman without a car or money to pay her doctor. Wow, now I really do sound like a liberal today.

This is day two of the apartment’s ten business day ultimatum; still no word from the punks. I’m pretty sure we can take them for $1,000-1,300 but we likely won’t get out of the lease.

Legal Woes IV -or- me vs. the man 3:

Today I looked up the applicable statutes to sue the landlord. It turns out that I have a very good chance at $1030 in statutory damages. That would be fun. Unfortunately, I’ll have to file in county court where they’ll notice if I screw up procedurally and it could take longer to get a court-date. On the upside, I’ll have access to all the discovery motions I can handle, so it won’t be long until I’m sitting on all of my apartment’s records (or at least all containing complaints and the responses thereto within the last five years).

Before I can file, however, I have to send a demand letter. Today I’m sending a letter demanding that they change the lease to month-to-month in exchange for my releasing the claims. I included an addendum in the letter; unfortunately this contract didn’t contain any of the cool provisions from Contracts II (force majeure is just fun to say).

If they don’t accept the offer within the time specified, I’ll have to file suit. I’m going to put the complaint online so that you, the loyal readers can nit-pick it and find all of the mistakes I made (you did a good job at that task with the review session contracts). If all goes well, we’ll either move to Pearland before October or I’ll get to don the suit, go to court and make $1200 plus court costs.

I don’t care what Wilks said, pro se is fun.

End-o-Summer News Round Up

Many things have happened over the summer, and Jeff “Tickle Me” McGuire suggested that I post them.

School

After working for a class action/mass tort firm for the summer, I’ve found my true calling. I would like few things better than to spend the rest of my career writing pretrial motions about the FRCP. I’m no longer worried about tax, so now I can (1) avoid those horrible tax courses and (2) try my hand at moot court. Oh happy day.

I’m not sure if they want this circulated, but here goes. The two people from glorious §b who were the biggest academic threats (and rivals for editorial positions) have transferred to a school outside the loop but inside the beltway. Combine this with the reported five people from §c and others from §§a and b, and all of the curves in the school just got easier for everyone; we’ll all move up a grade increment in our classes.

home life

The wife transferred out of her horrible store and into a very nice, upper middle class store in Pearland. I know it isn’t very PC, but lower income people (such as in our part of Pasadena) are, on average, extremely rude to cashiers and anyone else whom they can boss around.

We’re attempting to get out of our lease in the DMZ. We’ve sent out the complaint letters and were planning on filing suit next week. Unfortunately, they’re fixing the swimming pool today (one of our two biggest arguments), so we’re reevaluating out chances of success. We may very well be stuck in Harris County’s Purgatory for twelve more agonizing months.