Saint Paul livin'

So, it's been a week and a hlaf since we moved to Saint Paul and so far, this seems to have been a great move on our part. Aside from some shittiness in dealing with comcast cable company*, it's been great. The movers showed up on time and got everything in. We're probably 98% done with unpacking and our new apartment is starting to feel like a home. Which is nice. Those first days of sleeping on an air matress on the floor were not the most fun. At first we were just so excited to be here and get used to everything that it didn't matter, but I found it quickly lost its bohemian charm. And let's face it, I am not bohemian. I like nice things. Like mattresses...and couches. Oh, I love me some couches.
And I really love our new apartment. It's big. Three bedrooms big. And the location is superb. It's just over a block from Mitchell and tons of other shops and restaraunts. This past weekend we joined a local co-op that's 4 blocks or so from us. They looked like they have excellent, fresh meat and vegetables, and some very good lefse**.
Anyhoo. Everything has settled down now and so I'm trying to find something to fill the time I have on my hand. I have this feeling that if I don't find something to do, I'm just going to sit in my apartment and obssess about whether I'm really ready to go to law school. I'll read a lot of blogs and decide that maybe I am, only to reconsider every week or so. By the time I get to law school in August, there would be a good chance that I would be so amped up that I would end up throwing up on my shoes the first day. And I am not trying to set goals I cannot reach in law school, but one goal I am allowing my self is to not throw up on myself the first day. Every day after that is up for grabs, but a good, unsoiled first impression seems key to success in law school.
So. What to do with my time. I have this romantic notion that I'll find a job in a movie theater or a book store in the neighborhood and I'm going to pursue these jobs first, but I suppose I could end up temping somewhere too. I'm hoping I will still have some time to enjoy the last summer before law school starts kicking me in the face. We'll see.

*Note 1. Fucking Comcast. First they give us a defective DVR that shuts off every once in a while for no discernable reason, then when we're trying to switch it out for a good one, they miss 3 (THREE!) appointments. Then they finally came in and switched out the box only to find out that the box wasn't the problem. We've had another person out since then and though he had a different theory about what was wrong, it still has not solved the problem. I will say the customer service people and the manager I talked to were all very nice. This is possibly from all the practice they get, but I don't know.
**Note 2. I love lefse. Warm with a little bit of butter and sugar (not brown sugar. That's just wrong). Yum yum. The fact that lefse is something I can get pretty much whenever now is just one of the reasons I love Saint Paul. But it is a big reason.

And more importantly....(Partners)

Today, my wife and I have been married for 2 years.
They have not been an easy 2 years, but I think it says good things about the state of things that we have managed to struggle and stay on the same page. And I really believe that we've decided on a path that will work out for the both of us. And in some ways, we're just really, really lucky.
I really could not ask for a better partner.
*********
And now a story.
About a month ago, I caught a monster cold. Sore throat, runny nose, stuffy head. The works. I am one who is loathe to go to the doctor unless I need to. So, I fought the cold with Nyquil, vitamin C and will power. Which turns out to be a stupid way to fight a monster cold. It wore on for a couple weeks. Some days I really felt that I had turned the corner and others, not so much.
By the end of the two weeks, something weird happened. I got a sore at the base of my tongue where the muscle meets the bottom of my mouth. And I found it really hard to swallow. And it got worse. One Friday, I finally determined I should let a professional handle this. So, I called the doctor. My wife, asked if I wanted her to stay home, and I pathetically said, "yes please."
So, she fixed me some scrambled eggs, which, after setting up an appointment with the doctor, I tried to eat. I say tried, because it turns out that I had let the situation go too far and now I couldn't really swallow. Not good.
So, Dinah drives me to the doctor's office, where I meet with the doctor I'd been visiting for the last two years. He's a great guy. Really compassionate. Always willing to answer questions. And a nice man. He looks around in my mouth and determines he can't see anything, so he writes out a referral to a specialist downstairs. And walks me down there to make sure I am seen soon.
Yeah. He walked me down there personally.
And while we were walking down there, he noticed Dinah and asked if she were my partner. And without thinking, I said, "My wife." Which, I don't know if he found it insulting, since he's living in a state that, wrongly, doesn't recognize his relationship formally the way mine is, but I know I was sad and felt stupid for saying it. Especially since he left his office and walked me down to another office, instead of handing me a piece of paper and basically saying, "good luck buddy." Dick move on my part. But, he shakes my hand after he talks to some guy behind a desk and I get the feeling he either gets this all the time and he doesn't take it personally, or he has known me long enough to know I meant no slight. But still, I don't feel good about this moment.
And after waiting half an hour, I am shuttled to a room where an extremely good looking gentleman is brought in. He introduces himself as a "Dr." and I immediately think, "this man is too good looking to be a doctor. He looks like he's straight from Grey's Anatomy or something." I start to think of nicname along the lines of "McDreamy", but only come up with "McWow" before I give up.
After poking around in my mouth, he decides he needs to put a scope in my mouth and look around. This sounds like a good plan to me. I change my mind after he shows me the scope and tells me he has to put it in my nose. The scope is like the one doctors use to look in your ears, but instead there's a long hose that can contort through your nasal cavity and into the back of your mouth. The hose has a light and a camera that allows the doctor to look on a television screen and see what's going on with my mouth.
The nurses, one of whom is training the other, shoot my nose up with some sort of numbing agent and after 5 minutes, we're good to go. Dr. Hot starts feeding the hose into my nose and I can tell I'm probably not numb enough, but I just want to be able to swallow eggs again, so I go with it. While he's in there I can hear Dinah talking to me. I'm sort of in a haze because this feeling is really weird and I start to gag, which I think caused some of the fluid built up in my nose and mouth to get onto the camera. So, he pulls out.
Which causes me to go light-headed and nearly pass out. So, I'm given a rag on my neck and an apple, which I choke down the best I can. They take my blood pressure and I start to do the best I can to take deep breaths and get my shit back together. The doctor leaves the room and the nurses stay to watch me. Dinah holds my hand and tells me it was kind of neat to see the light coming out of my mouth and see down the back of my throat. One nurse asks the other if they should go do something, no doubt trying to appear industrious as she's being trained. The head nurse responds that they have to stay in case "something happens" and I feel it hard to keep myself calm for a second, but after five minutes, we try the left nostril. Yay.
This time goes better, though with about the same results. Ultimately, the most attractive doctor in Chicago decides to put my on a combination of steroids and antibiotics and have me come back the next week to check on things to be sure I'm recovering.
As we leave, Dinah handles the whole insurance issue and the parking validation. She drives me to get my perscriptions filled and as I look at her in the afternoon sun beeming in through the dirty windows of the mini-van, I think back to the moment where I said she was my wife. And I feel horrible. I realize again how lucky I am to have someone who can come into doctor's offices with me and help me and hold my hand, without the slightest bit of question about whether she should be there.
So, I guess today, I know how lucky I am to have found such a capable, amazing, beautiful person to be my partner. But, I am also lucky that the government and society allow us to enjoy the benefits of a committed relationship. And I have at least a glimmer of how unfair it is that others aren't afforded the same opportunity.

A lot of shit to talk about...

The countdown to Saint Paul went from being 'this year', to 'this summer', to 'probably in April or May' to being 'at the end of March.' And now it was last weekend. That's right, I am now in St. Paul, sitting in a coffee shop, eating an apple cinamon muffin, drinking a chai tea and updating my blog. Oh, and waiting for the movers to call. But let's start from about where we left off.

A couple weeks ago, Dinah went up to Minneapolis to interview for a job. She'd done a phone interview and wasn't exactly sure how it went, because, over the phone it's hard to get a read for how people are reacting. But it went well enough that she got to go up for an in-person interview, which also went well and ended in her getting an offer. Which she accepted. Of course, I feel a little weird that she'll be working at the University of Minnesota Law School, but I'm okay with it. They did pick the more talented of the two of us. And it probably won't be bad to know she has connections to people in the industry and who might know things about the job market that I might not. And I can root for the Gophers honestly. That's good too.

But the thing about the job is it happened rather quickly. Seemed like it took a little over a month from the application to the acceptance. So, immediately, we started hatching plans. She would probably have to stay with her brother for a bit and find an apartment while I stayed here and worked and tried to find someone to take over our lease down here. Hopefully quickly, but I was preparing myself for being her until May. June at the latest. It did not sound ideal, but it could work.

Then, sort of on a whim, we emailed someone who posted a craig's list ad for an apartment in St. Paul. A nice place. A lot bigger than our current place. And cheaper, especially since heat would be included. On the second floor, so we'll get a lot more light. And it's a block and a half from William Mitchell. The woman emailed us back and before we knew it, we had Dinah's brother take a look at the place, got his thumbs up and some pictures, and we signed a lease.

Which calls for a reworking of the plan. She'll have to stay with her brother until the lease starts in April. I'll work on getting someone into our place as soon as we can and we'll figure out the moving later.
So, we post our own ad on craig's list and showed the apartment to a nice couple on Wednesday. They seemed to really like our place and they filled out the application. And today they signed the lease. New plan. We'll move up to Saint Paul at the end of the month. Start packing now and I'll leave my job and move up with Dinah at the same time. We don't have to stay with her brother, because our new landlord's cool with us moving in a couple days early. So, we'll figure out the movers.

This seemed the most daunting of the tasks, because we'd heard stories about waiting for weeks, waiting for the movers to call. I like to think of myself as a person with simple needs. It turns out one of thoses needs is a nice couch to lie on. But Dinah was able to find a company that was based in Minneapolis/Saint Paul and makes the trip frequently. So, we'd only need a weekend of spartan existence. So that is our last plan, and up until now it's been going swimmingly. And, as you may know, Ilove it when a plan comes together.

It's been an amazing couple months. It seems like everything has just fallen into place for us. It's a powerful feeling that makes it hard to be cynical. Indeed, aided by the return of the sun to the midwest, I've been feeling a lot of happiness and hope of late. I really think everything is working out and will continue to work out.
The drive up was not without it's problems though. As you may know, we have two cats--a mother and son. They are skittish and do not adapt well to change. And they hate their carrying cases. So, we knew they were not going to appreciate the sudden loss of all the stuff in our old apartment, followed by being confined and riding in a car for 8 hours or so. We got a bigger carrying case, so they could be in it together and feel some solidarity or something. But, it turns out this was not as big a solution to that problem as we hoped. To be fair, there were stretches of quiet time. Hours of quiet sometimes. But, there was also a lot of crying. And there was Oscar scratching the carrier until he broke one of his claws and bled a little. Which was really worrying and frustrating, but ultimately not a big problem.

And after a great weekend of seeing some friends and family (including our little niece who keeps getting more and more adorable), I am feeling amazingly optomistic about living here. I'm really liking the neighborhood and our apartment (seriously a block from school is going to be awesome, and it's frickin' huge). I'm hopeful that Dinah will enjoy her job. And I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find some sort of work to keep my busy this summer. I think it's all going to work out well...you know if we work hard and make good decisions. That kind of thing.
**UPDATE: Movers come tomorrow morning. Kind of earlyish, but that sounds good to me.

William Mitchell it is...

I will be attending William Mitchell College of Law next year.

I've decided and I am really happy with that decision. After my next paycheck on Friday, I'm gonna write out the check for the deposit and wait. And wait.

I mean, there's a lot that has to happen between now and then--moving up to St. Paul, Dinah getting a job, subletting (or reletting) our apartment, me maybe getting a new lap top, saving up some money just in case--but mostly it feels like I'm just biding my time until I get to start going to classes.

Luckily for me, I'm really bad at waiting. I mean, I'm not gonna pull my hair out or anything, but I am filled with no small amount anxiety (probably stemming from the fact that there's no real form or order to the way any of the above-mentioned things that need to happen are actually going to happen). Still. It already feels better knowing I know where I'm going and that it's a firm decision and not a most-likely or a maybe.

I am going to William Mitchell.

Also lucky for me that this is the beautiful gray season in the midwest that inspires all kinds of joy and happy feeling. yay. Still though, the weather here has been rather amazing until today's snow. Most of the rest of the snow we got this winter has melted away and this weekend it even felt like spring, if only for a fleeting moment.

Weather seems to be the thing that most people mention about St. Paul or Minnesota. It's gonna be cold and snowy and winter will last 8 weeks longer than it does here. And they are probably right. But I'm hoping there will be more sun there, which is a dodgy hope at best. But whatever. I've seen Minneapolis in the winter and in the summer and I think it's not gonna be so bad.

And next year, I'll be too busy at law school to care too much about the weather.

Countdown to St. Paul...

I went to a law school open house earlier this year and something one of the current students said to the group of would-be students has stuck with me. She said, "If there's something you really want to do, do it before you get to law school, because you won't have time to do anything but read once you get here."
Fair enough. That's what I want out of law school, a challenge and good preparation. And while I'm fairly certain I've made my decision about where I go, I have no idea what to do with the time I have left before I get there. I mean, I am going to continue to work, of course, so it's not like I have hours of free time to fill or anything. But the rest of the time. I've spent a lot of time filling out applications, writing and editing essays, worrying, looking at viewbooks and thinking about the what the right place for me is. Now, I am almost done with that. And I have time to do something else.
So, now my question is what do I do?
I do have some goals going into law school. First, I want to drop a little more weight, so that when I inevitably start to feel stressy and eat my feelings, I'll have a little give before I need to feel bad about myself. Second, I'd like to do some writing--including the Gumshoe, which I will probably want to have in some form of stasis before law school. I'm thinking I may publish some of my short stories here, but we'll see if I really want to do that. Then, of course, there's the moving, subletting our apartment and that kind of stuff.
I think these are attainable goals. Nothing earth shattering, which I think is what worries me. I don't feel this particular need to get too prepared for law school. I want to read a couple books on the law and economics, but other than that, I'm not sure there's too much else I can do. Just keep counting down the time and try to keep myself busy.
***********
So, yeah, I've pretty much made my decision about which law school and I've started to get everything ready for them. I'll send in my deposit later this month and that will be that. As anxious as I am about how I will now fill my time, while waiting for school to start and for the move to happen, I am really excited.
It's hard to quantify it, because it still feels so far away that it might all fall apart somehow*. But, Dinah and I are planning on going to an admitted students weekend in March and I am really excited about that. I imagine we'll probably spend some of the time looking around the neighborhood we plan to be in and after that I will be able to visualize it a lot easier. So, let's count this down.

*The zombies could attack anytime.

Well, now we know....

Mark McGwire used steroids.

Most of you aren't probably surprised. I was a little surprised, but not all that much. I had been working under the assumption that Big Mac had only used Andro, which he admited to way back when, and which I didn't really think of as cheating.

But, I guess not much changes in the way I view him. He did cheat and violate the law, I now know, but he was still the best slugger of his time. I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame (as does Bonds), but with some sort of notation that his time was one of steroid use and cheating and that he was suspected and admitted of cheating.

For all that though, I am a little more disheartened than I thought I would be.

Of bruised egos and decisions being made

I did not get into the University of Minnesota Law School. It's an elite school and because of my not-so-amazing grades at Grinnell and my strong, but not strong enough showing on the LSAT (both below their medians), I thought that would mean I would get in and be given not a lot of financial aid. So, I was pretty sure my Law School choices would come from the three schools who did let me in, but I wasn't prepared to not get in at all. I mean, there was a creeping notion in the back of my mind, but I did little to entertain it.

I've been trying to figure out what this means. Clearly it doesn't mean I can't or won't become an excellent attorney. It may make things a little harder because I won't have the opportunity to go to the best thought-of law school in the area, but, like I said, I wasn't thinking they were gonna give me the financial aid the other schools did, so I won't be as burdened by loans and payments and such when I get out, so I can take a job that I want and may be better suited to my skills as opposed to one I need. So, I think from that point of view this isn't a big blow.

It really comes down to the fact that I think they don't think I'm as good as the people they've let in and the fact that they turned me down. I understand they can only make judgments based on the numbers and application materials, and that no one is all that sure about whether the numbers are the overall guiding force or whether the other stuff helps or hurts you all that much. And I have to concede my numbers are not up to their high standards. I just thought everything else I have done, the experience I have and the writing ability I think I have, would put me in contention. And the joys of not knowing is that I can think it did. I can imagine one admission counselor fighting for me, before having to concede, that yeah, there probably are better candidates. Who knows? That might be what happened.

It's all academic at this point though. And really Minnesota probably wasn't going to be that much of an option for me. So, it's all about my ego.

I know what my choices are and hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will talk to people at each of the schools and get all the details I need to make my decision. And that's exciting.

I still have three very good schools to choose from and that makes me extremely lucky. It does dissappoint me that I won't be a Golden Gopher and that I won't be able to participate in their annual musical. But that's okay. I'll get my start in the coffee houses and grtty off broadway scene in St. Paul (where all my choices reside).