Dublin Update

I have 3 things on my to do list and not much time to do any of them. I had every ambition of adding "update on my blog" as the 4th thing, but I opened my internet browser to see that my google reader had over 40 unread blog entries. ("Hi, my name is Bagel, and I have a problem...")

Other things on my to do list:

1. Write a recommendation.
2. Find Shaunak. He was supposed to come visit me today, but missed his flight. Raise your hand if you are suprised:



3. Drink, drink, and drink some more. First step is to do a tour of the Jameson factory and volunteer as a "taste tester." Second step is a musical pub crawl. Third step is to make more drunk dials at unbelievably high international roaming rates which are just too complicated to remember when inebriated.

Not my new haircut...

...but 100x as cute! How amazing are Dinkeneh's 1st Birthday Pix?!?!

Dear Chicago: Why you gotta waste my flava?!?!

After the midterm yesterday, I decided I would take an afternoon off and take the train into Chicago to get my hair done. What was supposed to be a relaxing afternoon/night off turned into a comedy of errors before all was said and done. Here are the highlights from before things went sour:



Stop #1: my favorite place to get chai in the whole city. Coincidentally, it's across the street from my favorite place to get a mani-pedi, but I didn't have enough time for that yesterday.



Stop #2: the Brown Line. When I was still planning on living in Chicago, I had narrowed all of the areas where I could potentially live down to any area that was on the Brown Line. I wanted to have this view every day on the way into work.



Stop #3: post-cut, pre-color. After shopping around on Armitage for an hour or so, I showed up to my hair appointment 15 minutes late (I thought it started at 4:30, turns out it started at 4:00). That becomes important later.



Stop #3.5: mid-color. I love my salon! They show chick flicks all day long, and they give you wine and champagne to your heart's content. Plus, they have super cheap blowouts. Hence the name (and the best part!), Blo Salon.

After this point everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I didn't get out of the salon until 7:00. The last train of the day for South Bend left at 7:10. I got to the train station at 7:25 - if only I hadn't been fifteen minutes late to my hair appointment! :(

No train? F! Call my friend Julie. She lives in Evanston and I heard she was in Chicago this weekend. Maybe I can stay with her and take the train tomorrow... Turns out Julie has two friends already staying with her for the marathon and her roommate's parents are in town and also staying in their 2 bedroom apartment.

No room for Bagel? Double F! At this point, my cellphone is dying, so I need to come up with a plan and fast. Decide to get on the Blue Line to O'Hare and just take a bus back to campus. That takes forever, and I don't have much time before the last bus to South Bend leaves, but it's my only option right now. Of course, with only one stop left to go before O'Hare and 15 minutes before the next bus, my train decides to stop on the tracks no fewer than 5 times.

At this point, I give up. I hate the bus, and the last time I took it I was stranded in Highland, Indiana due to the hurricane flooding the interstates. Hurricane in Indiana, you ask oh-so-skeptically? Yes. Hurricane in Indiana. It's the Bagel Luck. I'm renting a car and calling it a night.

At this point my comedy of errors continues to take a least three more bad turns (phones for the rental car companies in the airport don't work; first four companies I tried didn't want to rent to me because I didn't have a ticket showing I'd flown into O'Hare, my ATM card won't work in the first three ATM's I tried and I don't have enough cash for the tolls). Eventually, I got home safe and sound. Three hours late. After driving for 2.5 hours. And I was craaaaaabby. Hence why I never took any photos of the finished product haircut.

Today I get to go back to Chicago to return the rental car and try to make it home on public transpo again. Joy.

My Little Corner of the World

I don't want to study for my Trusts & Estates midterm tomorrow. Instead, I'm giving you a glimpse into the things currently making me happy in my little corner of the world:



1. My new friend! An Obama action figure that points at you when you lift his left arm. I like to think he's saying: "Bagel! Get to work!" (and then I like to ignore him)

2. My new favorite song is India.Arie's Beautiful Flower. See a video of her recording the song here.

3. I have a new pencil bag. The name of the pencil bag is "Hippos love stripes!" The inside of the pencil bag is green and blue striped. The hippos make me happy. I don't know what I'm going to do when I am finally forced to leave school and abandon my unnatural affection for school supplies.

4. Speaking of school supplies (and with a special shout out to Lil Hamilton, the only person I know who has more affection for post-its than I do), I have a multi-colored post-it note pad and for the last few weeks I've been working on the whites. Today, I finally finished off the last of the dul-drum whites and moved on to purple. Clearly, a superior post-it note color.

5. Not to jinx it, but our journal is doing pretty well right now. We started our Issue 2 articles this week and it has been years since we've started Issue 2 in the fall semester. The credit for this goes to a number of other people, especially last year's Editor-in-Chief. I'm grateful to all of them for making my life so much easier right now.

Now, back to work. Notice that did not make the list of things making me happy today...

Happy Sassy Pink Legs Day!

Growing up in Catholic schools you have to celebrate All Saints Day every year on the day after Halloween. You don't get one without the other, and I think the more dogmatic of Catholics justified the dubious aspects of Halloween with the consolation prize that the next day was a holy day of obligation.

Today, I'm instituting my own version of an Halloween-All Saints Day duo. Yesterday was Notre Dame's Babykiller Day. Every fall, Notre Dame sets up a display right outside the law school doors to honor every "child" that has been aborted:



The first year I saw this, it came shortly after the Torts Fiasco where I was forever labeled a babykiller by my class mates. Hence why I no longer have any patience for the Notre Dame Prolife point of view. Prolife is one thing. Notre Dame Prolife is a whole different phenomenon. Notre Dame's conservatives take their religious politics to an oppressive and hateful level. Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here are a list of my top five favorite moments where Notre Dame Conservatives reminded us all who remains supreme within this law school:

1. Comment from my Constitutional Criminal Procedure Class: "Everyone knows the law only protects murders, abortionists, and unpopular minorities."

2. Comment in the journal office during a heated conversation about universal health care: "Not everyone deserves health care."

3. The day that I learned that premarital sex constitutes grounds for expulsion. It's in the student handbook. This came within the same week that I learned that birth control was only available for "medical purposes."

4. The day that a student told my Property professor that she doesn't care if his son is gay and an abomination, he had better defend her in class when she says homosexuality is an appropriate reason for a landlord to discriminate against tenants.

5. The girl who told me that birth control should be illegal because it is promotes free sexual behavior which is oppressive to women. Coupled with this ND tenured professor's essay on the evils of birth control which I've mentioned before.

What does any of this have to do with Sassy Pink Legs Day? I've decided that since yesterday was my annual reminder that I am in an environment where I never feel quite at home, today is the day where I'm going to celebrate me by doing all things sassy and Bagel-esque. The Catholics have their All Saints Day to make them feel better after the unholiness of Halloween. I have my Sassy Pink Legs Day to make me feel better after the oppressiveness of BabyKiller Day.

20 Something Bloggers

One of the comments on the last post mentioned Twenty Something Bloggers. Check it out! It looks kind of cool.

I just tried to join and after filling out the profile information, it told me that I have to wait for an administrator to review my application prior to approval/acceptance. I feel so vulnerable right now - I hope they like me! ;)

In the mean time, this looks like a perfect excuse to go through one of those periods that I tend to go through every so often* where I want to make myself cooler/more interesting/sophisticateder (new word - you read it hear first!). I feel like becoming a "20 Something Blogger" means that I have to have provide interesting (or at least entertaining) insight on the life of a 20-something from here on out. If you have any idea how to do that, please leave me a comment with detailed instructions.




*In college, Angeles and I referred to them as my "deep, yo" phases. As in, "Bagel, you look like you're being deep, yo." Since I haven't used the phrase "deep, yo" in at least three years, I'm looking for a new name too. I'm thinking "hopeless poser phase"?

A Whole New Bagel.

Or a whole new Bagel's Blog to be more accurate. What do you think? Thanks go to Nikki once again for the new 'do! What do you think?