Prepoceros

Things look a bit different around here, I realize. (If they don’t, you probably need to refresh and/or clear your computernet thing.) Don’t get used to it, though, because they’re about to get differenter.

I We John just updated my version of WordPress for the first time since I created this blog THREE YEARS AGO. We skipped all the way from 1.5.1.3 to 2.5. Dealing with comment spam had been unbearable for months now—I get about a hundred spam comments a day, and none of the plugins worked because I was so far behind the times, so I’ve been sorting through them all by hand to pick out the occasional real live commenter.

Updating, in addition to its many benefits, meant that my theme reverted back to its original version, before I painstakingly (because I am bad at CSS, not because the changes I made were all that complicated) tweaked the color scheme and added the rhino header. I could recover my modified theme, but I figure that after three years, it’s probably time for a change.

I could’ve used the default blue theme as a placeholder, but if anyone new stumbles across my blog, I’d rather have them think I *tried* to spice up my site design and did poorly than think I didn’t try at all. Hence the red red RED theme, which was the first half-decent one I saw on wordpress.net, and which will be gone as soon as I can come up with something I like better. So you can expect to be seeing it for the next six months.

How long has it been since I last posted? A month? Everybody’s stopped reading, right? Awesome. Now I can talk about you behind your backs.

The thing is, I had finals, so I took a week or two off, and after that I’d get back to blogging, but then I graduated, which was a Big Life Change (in that my employability spiked dramatically), so naturally my next post HAD to be about graduation, but that would be a LONG post, and an IMPORTANT post, and really what’s the point of starting all that today when I can eat cake and take a nap instead. You see?

But no, that’s not how blogging works. Blogging (the hacky way I do it, at least) is about jotting things down as they happen, however dull and poorly-written the results might be. Planning, gathering resources, editing…those are for chumps. And professionals.

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It probably won’t surprise you that I, a reasonably regular blogger, keep up with a considerable number of other blogs. I collect and read RSS feeds with Bloglines, which greatly simplifies that up-with-keeping. If a blog doesn’t publish a feed, I tend to write it off as being not worth the effort; I can think of only three non-feeded blogs that I remember to read at least once a week.

I generally settle in to check on everybody once a day, maybe two or three times if I have lots of work to procrastinate on, and it usually takes me about an hour to get through a day’s posts. If there are enough intriguing links to other compelling sites with large archives, the process can last all day (see above re: procrastination).

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I went to see my doctor today about some persistent mild abdominal pain I’ve been having, and, after feeling me up, she prescribed me two antibiotics. I took the first one (metronidazole) a few minutes ago, and it was awful. The pill, medium-sized, wasn’t coated at all; when I failed to swallow it on the first try and it started dissolving in my mouth, I gagged and almost threw up.

I managed to get it down on the second gulp, but the horrible, bitter taste lingered, even after a whole glass of water. I thought some food might dull the taste, but I only ended up bitterizing the first half of my dinner. One down, twenty-seven to go. Blech.

Any suggestions out there for swallowing nasty, uncoated pills? I think I might try putting it in a spoonful of yogurt.

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Last night I found myself in a dueling piano bar, at a going-away party for one of John’s friends. Have you heard of these? This place, Howl at the Moon, is apparently a national chain, though I hadn’t heard of such a thing before yesterday.

Basically it’s a bar with a stage featuring two pianos and four or five performers. They switch off onto other instruments from time to time, but mostly they play piano and sing popular songs from “Wild Thing” all the way through that new “not gonna write you a love song” song I’ve had stuck in my head for two weeks now. The audience sings along and, a few at a time, make fools of their drunk selves up on stage.

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Samson doesn’t have what you might call “road sense,” in that he doesn’t have sense enough not to leap into the road when traffic is barrelling towards him. Even in the parking lot he’s usually oblivious to an approaching car until it gets within one dog-length of him, when it startles him. Slower-moving dogs, on the other hand, he notices a block away. I guess terriers haven’t evolved their way into living with cars yet.

Usually when we go on walks I try to minimize the number of major streets we cross, which means the walks get a bit repetitive: every morning we walk around our block, and every afternoon we walk around the next block over. In the evenings we do a lap around the building for one last pee before bed.

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I applied to three law schools. Texas rejected me, Houston admitted me and offered me a merit scholarship, and South Texas admitted me and offered me TWO merit scholarships worth even more. Of course, since UH is public and STCL private, it would still have cost me more to take those two checks from South Texas.

None of that matters, anyway, because UH was my first choice by far on account of their nationally-ranked Intellectual Property Law program and convenient location. I would have accepted UH even if I had to pay for the whole thing myself.

Last Friday I went to a come-here-we’re-awesome program at UH, even though I’d already made up my mind. The free lunch (awesome Mexican from somewhere) and free ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s) alone were more than worth it. But beyond that, I enjoyed the mock class, student panel, and all that jazz. You guys, I am SO excited about law school. Yeah, it’s going to be hard work, but right now I can’t wait to get started. Someone remind me how excited I am in November, mkay?

I mailed in my registration fee yesterday, so as soon as the admissions office gets that letter, I’ll officially be a UH Law Center 0L. Yippee!

The last few showers I’d taken before today had been at John’s (because we work out together a few times a week at the gym in his complex), so I hadn’t shaved my legs in almost a week, and they were getting to be rather unladylike.

So I was excited this morning, after showering at my own apartment, that I could finally wear shorts or a skirt again. (You may recall the trouble I’ve had finding jeans to fit my remarkably average body.) I picked out a summer dress I’d bought two weeks ago and reveled in its swinginess, tra la.

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I don’t read Slashdot, but John does, and today he showed me one of the funniest grammar smackdowns I’ve ever seen. In a thread about New York City and Apple having similar logos and something happening and/or not happening blah di blah, one poster said

actually I hope it goes the over way. Apple needs to be shown that not every apple is their’s.

The two logo’s don’t look anything like each other. NYC’s is missing the giant bite for starters.

And a few comments down someone else replied

Damn, dude. An apostrophe doesn’t mean “Look out, here comes an S!”

Love it. Quick and awesome.

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To the three students in my SAT class of twelve-ish who nod with understanding when I, with dramatic vocal inflection, make an insightful comment or reveal the “wow” behind a really useful test-taking strategy:

If it weren’t for you, I’d have all the “perk” drained out of me long before the two and a half hours were up. So thanks for that.