LSAT (and a baseball tangent in Note4)

On September 26 of this year, I'll be taking the LSAT. 59 days, 22 hours from this moment, I'll be locked in a room with a bunch of other people on a Saturday morning to test my ability to do some stuff that is in some way related to being an attorney. It doesn't do me any good to dwell on the question of what doing logic games has to do with taking a deposition, but I've worked in law firms for a while, and I have yet to hear an attorney complaining because he chose the wrong diagram type to use on the multiple sequencing question his client needed done in 35 minutes. I'm just putting it out there.
This is where my lack of a job becomes a plus, because I can now study pretty much everyday and not get overwhelmed with my schoolwork and my internship*. For the last couple weeks I've been going to the library for a couple hours a day (more on Friday and Saturday when there's no internship) and going through study books and doing practice tests. And my score has improved. It's not quite at the goal I set, but it now seems attainable. Which is good.
Still, though. The LSAT is hitting me in a lot of ways I didn't think it would. I used to be really good at standardized tests. I didn't really study for the SAT or the ACT. I just kind of showed up and took them. And I didn't blow them away or anything, but I did pretty well. Well enough to go to a really good school, anyway. Intellectually, I knew the LSAT would be tougher than those two, but I thought it would all come back to me. It has and it hasn't. That test-taking mindset is coming back, but that confidence still isn't there. Which I think is because I feel like there's more riding on this test than on either of those two. I knew I would go to college somewhere good. It didn't seem like a possibility that I would fail. Now, it's different. I don't think it's a big possibility that I'll stumble and mess up the test so badly that no school will have me, but it's there. And truthfully, I want to go somewhere really good. If I have to go somewhere that's of lesser regard, I'll figure it out, but really I want to go to a good law school.
But it's not just that I want to go somewhere good that makes the test more worrisome than the college entrance exams. It's also that I finally figured it out. I finally figured out what I want to do. I mean, I haven't nailed down what area of law, but I've ruled some out**. And I know I don't deserve a good score just because I've figured out at almost 32 years of age what I want to do with my life, but it's been such an odd journey for me. And to finally be able to figure out where I want to go, it's frightening to think it could be elusive because I don't read as fast as others. Or because I don't know which order the speakers at Seneca Falls should go in.***
It isn't really helping that I can get obsessed with numbers. It's partially an obsessiveness that I was born with, but it's been nurtured by a life-long love of baseball. I've spent summers wondering if a pitcher could to get their ERA under 3.00 or if a batter could notch a batting average over .300. And I remember when I in London a flatmate would leave me notes about Mark McGwire's homerun chase****. I just get obsessed with numbers. So, trying to get that magic number for the LSAT is feeding into that obsession. And it's probably not good. I mean, ultimatley, five or six years from now, that number is not going to mean that much. It's gonna be a meaningless number. I mean, numbers only represent what we let them. Right now, this number represents my future. It represents where I could be. What path I could take. And that's why I'm studying everyday and the library on Lincoln and Belmont.
******
I just set up a couple law school visits in Minneapolis. That feels good.

*Note. I have only three classes left and I've done enough hours to be done with my internship. The attorney I'm working for is letting me stick around until I find something, which is cool.
**Note2. Sorry Maritime and Admiralty law. It's not you. It's.....no. It's you.
***Note3. One of the logic games I worked yesterday was about the order the speakers must go in. Apparently, Elizabeth Cady Stanton cannot speak before or after Frederick Douglas. And if Lucretia Mott goes second then Susan B. Anthony must speak fifth. I'm sure these great people would all be comforted to know that they are making gains in the all important minutae of LSAT prep tests.
****Note4. Seriously, everyone. Let him into the Hall of Fame. He didn't do anything illegal. Ethically problematic, maybe. But there are plenty of gents in the Hall whose indiscretions were a lot more dubious than taking over the counter supplements. We're not talking about going to shady doctors who are charging thousands of dollars for their "treatment" or evading federal authorities. We're talking about something he got at a nutrition store from some dude who makes $6/hr. The hardest thing he had to evade was the child-proof cap. And this Hank Aaron talk of letting Pete Rose in and keeping the steroids guys out, is making me furious. Seriously? Mr. Aaron, I respect you and all you've accomplished, but your protests about steroids and other supplements ring a little false after watching you yukking it up with Barry Bonds (who did involve himself in illegal activities, by the way) in Pepsi commercials.
But, let's look at Mr. Aaron's argument. Pete Rose bet on baseball. That's always been the BIG NUMBER 1 DO-NOT for baseball. He bet on his team when he had the ability to affect the outcome of games. Baseball is a competition. And he would have us punish people, who in an effort to be competitive, or to gain a competitive edge, took steroids. These people wanted to compete. They wanted to win. Or they wanted the money that came from being successful at their chosen craft. They didn't do it ethically, and often did it illegally, but at least they were doing it because they wanted to play harder and do better. Rose, on the other hand, he was not looking for a competitive edge. He was the manager of a team, and he had a responsibility to put that team in a position to win every night. He has a fiduciary duty to his players and to his organization. He owes them loyalty and his best judgment. But if he's got other interests--if he's looking for cash, then can he honestly say he is not putting that interest above the interest of a player who needs a day off or pitcher who probably shouldn't go out for another inning? And I know he claims he never bet on his team to lose. But, I simply don't believe him.
The difference between the two situations is that Rose was engaging in a situation where he was threatening the basic premise of the game: that it is a competition.
McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens and all those guys who did or did not use whatever. They were trying to gain an advantage. To make the game competitive. And while it can be argued they were making the game less competitive in doing so, I think I've seen enough evidence to say that so many people were using performance enhancers that it's hard to argue an advantage existed. The only thing they threatened were the numbers. Like Aaron's 756. People argue the numbers meaningless. That's the thing. They always were meaningless. They're numbers. They only represent what we let them represent. And Aaron's remarkable journey to 756 is not now meaningless because Bonds took a more dubious path to a higher number. In fact, I would argue it's more meaningful. But. Yes, Mr. Aaron, your name is no longer the first one in the book. And I can understand why that would piss you off.

Gumshoe #8

Sorry for the long wait. This is the scene I had in my mind when I wanted to start writing the Gumshoe, so I really wanted to make sure I got somethings right. I also want to make sure I'm not being too cliche with how I'm writing this. I was talking to my mother-in-law, who also loves detective novels, though I don't think she's read the Gumshoe or is aware I have a blog. But, she was talking about some of the cliches and I got a little worried I was falling into some of them without thinking. Clearly, I am using some cliche, but I'm hoping I'm doing them in a way that makes sense and is interesting and doesn't just take the cliche for granted. But ultimately I don't know. Either way, I hope you enjoy.

It was 10 o’clock. I sat in the car outside the Holiday Inn, loving the feeling of having slept for a good long while. My plan was to sit in the El Camino, to which Ms. Fortune had been gracious enough to drive me and watch the hotel for a while. I had to see if Chance or his friend “Jim” would be there and if that led me anywhere. If I didn’t see them by 11.30 or so, then I’d head in and try to see them from across the room. There would be a big risk of being seen, because the bar was pretty small, but I couldn’t risk missing them altogether. It wasn’t much of a plan, but this whole case was making me feel like I wasn’t much of a detective.
I had parked the car out of the range of the streetlights, its warm, safe glow about a yard from my front and behind my bumper, piercing the cold fall evening. It wasn’t cold enough to freeze, but it would probably get pretty close tonight.
As I settled in, I turned on the radio to my favorite classic rock station. Not to my surprise, it had commercials running, but I remained hopeful. “Tonight is the breakthrough,” I said to myself.
There are two things I love about a stake-out. The first is being able to just sit in your car and listen to the radio. When I was young, before I staked out anything, I’d lie on my bed and listen to music for days at a time. This was before iPods, when radio ruled your life like a god. If you were poor or had spent your allowance money on baseball cards (which was often the case for me) or you didn’t have allowance or an album wasn’t being sold at the crappy mall near your house, and you wanted to hear a certain song, you just had to wait for the radio to play it. I’d lay on my broken-down bed, my hands behind my head waiting for the moment the new Prince or the old BTO came one. I’d wade through the tides of good songs that would ebb and flow with the pools of bad songs. Sometimes there’d be hours of good songs, and you’d feel so good. So alive. But all too often there’d be a lot of okay songs and some really shitty ones, but that’s how it was. It sounds strange to say now, but there wasn’t anything you could do about it. But, it taught you patience. It taught you a little something about living in a world with other people and their tastes. And, if I haven’t overstated it too much already, it taught you something about life.
And when your song came on, or when they piled those great songs back to back to back, there was no better feeling. The radio waves opened up and smiled on you. Or when you were just driving home after a fight or make-up sex and that perfect song came on. When it looked like I wasn’t going to graduate high school and Springsteen was there to pick me up or when I had made the football team won a game (which wasn’t often on the south side of Des Moines, believe me) and Guns N Roses was there, perfect in the moment, it’s a feeling you can’t get by dialing an iPod to the song you think you want. The problem with iPods is they cater to your every whim, playing whatever song you think you want to listen to. But sometimes you’re the last person in the world who knows exactly what it is you need.
Did I mention the other thing I love about stakeouts is the propensity to get lost in tangents?
I looked up at the Holiday Inn. It’s a high rise hotel that rams into the sky out of nowhere. It’s called the downtown Holiday Inn, but it’s technically not downtown. It’s kind of close, which is good enough for most everybody, I guess. I was staking out the main entrance figuring that was the best chance to catch one of the two going in. He probably had no idea that I was onto him. Probably is a word that seems to get me into trouble a lot.
It’s an odd place to meet, I thought. Like I said, it’s not really downtown. It’s not too far out of the way, but still it’s not a typical meeting place. Not with actual downtown not so far away and full of places both more chill and more hip. But, I’m not the Chamber of Commerce, so if this is where they want to meet, so be it. The top floor of the building rotates, which may be a draw for Chance or his friend from “San Francisco”. It’s the only place in our little city that does that.
It started to rain outside. First, it started in a light mist that reminded us of the spring that brought the bright vibrant greens that now died in the cold of an autumn night. The rain picked up speed and intensity and the wind joined in. I had to crack my window a little so my windows wouldn’t fog over. I squinted through the plops of water on my windshield as I stared at the entrance of the building.
I chuckled to myself when I remembered. This is where they held prom. The thought crossed my mind so casually, but the pangs of the memories made everything come back fresh.
Mindy James. She looked so gorgeous that night. Her dirty-blonde hair tied in a ribbon, curls busting loose over her ears and one down her forehead, bobbing close to her right eye. The green dress she wore was modest compared to many of the others I saw that night, but she looked fantastic. We’d been dating for a long time before this, so I think I’d forgotten how beautiful she was. But I remembered that night. Sitting in my car, as Purple Rain started pouring from the speakers and the cold autumn rain pattered around me, I remembered again how beautiful she looked on that warm spring night. And I remembered how much I’d loved her.
There’s something different about your life the first time you tell someone you love them and mean it. Something inside of you breaks, never to be made whole again.
I never meant to cause you any sorrow.
I never meant to cause you any pain.
The music started slowly, quietly. And it brought me to the time before the break-ups and the reconciliations. Before we started hitting each other and I got arrested and she dropped the charges. Before we split up for good. And way before she was dressed up in a BTO t-shirt to cover the torture that had been inflicted on my sweet Mindy.
It’s such a shame our friendship had to end.
I sat still and rigid on my seat in the front seat. My eyes closed and I could smell her perfume. I could see the curls of her hair as I brushed them over her ear and told her for the first time that I loved her. I felt her body go rigid against mine for a second before she kissed my neck and said she loved me. If I hadn’t known how it would turn out for her, I would’ve said this was the best moment of my pathetic life. I had meant it so much. And I could have actually been good for her. It didn’t have turn out that way. I could’ve been less controlling. Less angry and protective. We could’ve made it work on my police salary. Or I could’ve at least caught the monster who skewered her. I could’ve been strong enough for that. And I didn’t have to run to Chicago after. That cult. I could’ve been better. Stronger. Anything. I should’ve been.
I know times are changing.
It’s time we all reach out for something new.
And that means you too.
You say you want a leader,
But you can’t seem to make up your mind.
I think you better close it.
And let me guide you to the Purple Rain.
I felt the tears coming out of my eyes as the song retreated and Blue Oyster Cult replaced it, probably the song that would cause someone else to break down like a sentimental idiot.
I heard a quick pop that sounded like distant thunder, but I suddenly felt the clouds surround my brain and I was out.
**********
When I came to, I was tied to a chair in a dark room. I struggled just long enough to realize I was tied with rope and that whoever had done this really knew what they were doing. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. There was a little light coming in through the sheer curtains that hung over the windows. I couldn’t say for sure how long I’d been out, but I was betting it wasn’t too long and we were now in the downtown Hilton.
I noticed a bulky presence sitting on the couch in front of me.
“Chance,” I managed to spit out despite my swollen tongue. There was no response. “Look, I’m pretty sure it’s you Chance, so let’s dispense with the melodrama.”
The lump stayed silent. I took a breath and let it out loudly. I was considering how to get more light in here when I heard a smash and a doorway appeared to my right. Light streamed in from the hallway lights for a second until an imposing figure stepped in and yelled “Police. No one moves.”
A figure behind the first flipped on the lights and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Detective Muldoon,” I said with a crack in my voice. “I am happy to see you.”
Her eyes stared straight past me. I turned my head back to where the lump had been. It was Chance. He’d been stabbed in the chest and on the wall above him someone had written in blood, “I only wanted 2 be some kind of friend”.

4th

Happy 233rd America.
And to celebrate, many drunken citizens will (almost?) blow off their fingers, eat way too much grilled meat, and enjoy the colorful explosions that will remind them of the wars past that we have sanitized and made glorious instead of thinking of the wars we're fighting now with troops who have no support once they get back and for whom we refuse to sacrifice anything for.
The founding fathers would be happy to see us now.