Spring time trips and birthday disappointment.

In continuing my attempt to take you through the months of life that were un-blogged, I am writing once more about last spring. (And hey, this is the third post this month so I would say I am making some, middling, progress.)
My parents sent my little sister to visit me, for her spring break, which just happened to be around my birthday and, more importantly at cherry blossom time. It was a pretty awsome trip, although not without its trials-we are sibblings after all and even as we get older we know how to push each other's buttons, although traveling together has gotten much easier as time has gone on. (The first road trip I rember taking with her, led to me threatening at some point to throw her out the window. I was serious, my parents were displeased.)

It was nice to show her around DC and take her to some of my favorite places, with the added advantage of Meghan still being on my parents dole, so she was a less expensive visitor than many of my friends. Plus there really isn't a better time to be in the district than the end of March. (This is a stark contrast to the beginning of July which I would argue is the worst time to be in the district.)  
Another plesant birthday surprise- my parent's got me a Kindle Fire! I was very excited, I always ask for a surprise gift from my parents. I know in many ways this is mean, basically I am testing how well they know me, giving them no hints, but it makes the gift so much better because I have no idea what is coming and it is something I probably wouldn't have gotten for myself. Which really illistrates the problem of gift giving as you get older, anything that I would ask for there is a good chance I will just buy it for myself and giving money just goes to needs like groceries and rent. (Not that I mind thos things- a girls gotta eat but it is so much fun to be really surpriesed and touched by a gift.)
Unfortunately my little sister had to leave early on the morning of my birthday, which left a bit to be desired as birthdays go. Thursdays were my long day last semester (nearly straight through from 10 in the morning till 8 at night) and most of my friends (including my roommate) forgot I realize that this is partly my fault, my facebook doesn't have my birthday on it, and I tend to not make a big deal about it, but still it was a little depressing. Thankfully I had saved a stack of cards from people at home to open and enjoy, because a spring break trip and law school isn't quite as insane as a wedding. (Plus my roommate eventually remembered and insisted on margaritas and chocolate cake- something that tastes good even the day after your birthday.)

She is definitely not Jake, but my roommate makes a mean birthday cake.

If I visit you in Arizona in August and Alaska in January you know I will always be your friend.

Somehow this has been luxuriating in my "to be written" folder for the better part of a semester. I will blame it on the very trip I am going to detail, claiming (mostly falsely) that by taking a trip to Alaska at the beginning of the semester I got so behind that I was unable to write. In truth, starting my semester with an awesome Alaskan wedding did set a precedent for what has been a very fun semester. (And evidently when I am having fun I don't write about it.)
Last year, at about this time-as the cold weather and grey skies were starting to get to me, I started planning a trip to see one of my best friends from college who is getting her master's degree in Arizona. (I will call her Sadie, because as the first of my college friends to get married she has become "Sadie, Sadie married lady.") At this point she was single, not even a ring on her finger, but she was talking about this boy an awful lot. Then I found out the boy was moving to Arizona to get his masters (and I started to get worried that I would be a third wheel) and then I found out that they were going to live together (and I worried that I had lost my place to stay) and then he proposed and I was afraid that I wouldn't get to go on my vacation.
As you can see this was really about me...
In all honesty I was a little nervous, I understand the way adding a partner can change things and I wanted to be able to reminisce and enjoy with out unwanted male interference. I shouldn't have worried, he was kind enough not to move down until a week after my vacation. It was a wonderful little vacation, what the English would term a "mini-break." It was lovely to be able to lay in the sun, drink girly drinks, gossip and brainstorm about Sadie's wedding. (There was a small incident where I stepped on a rattle snake but it didn't bite me so I am still alive.) Somehow I survived without a burn or a bite, rhapsodizing about the glories of Tuscan in August.
Then in October I got an invitation in the mail, and convinced my parents to send me to Alaska (where both Sadie and her now husband are from) for Christmas. I had an amazing time:
First: It is great to see friends again.
I had seen Sadie this summer but other friends I had known from Berkeley went up and converged on Alaska. We all stayed in Sadie's parents house for what felt like a week of slumber parties, except with wedding cake and champagne sampling, not to mention decoration and program prepping duties. (I don't know how her father survived as the only man in a house of between six and eight females (and I was sleeping in the den so he was without what my father would term a "man-cave.")  He was an amazing sport though, even playing card games with us and diligently practicing for his speech and dance with the bride.
Second: I kinda liked the weather.

Yes it was cold (I don't think it ever got above -10 (yes that is a negative) but you prepare for it, and the city of Anchorage knows how to handle snow. Plus when you are going out you prepare for it mentally and physically, no one expects anything other than tights and boots and snow in your hair.  Plus (as you can see) it makes for some awesome photos.
Finally I love a wedding.
For all my doubts and questions about getting and being married (at least for myself) I love a wedding. They are probably my favorite way to spend a Saturday. There is booze and dressing up and food and cake and the best kind of dancing, where you do actual steps and the music switches through the last three decades and somehow you spend six hours in five inch heels and don't even notice. Although my enthusiasm may have been because of the ratio of single men to single women, because my female friends gravitate toward serious long term relationships and the bride and groom's male friends don't I was one of the few single women left to dance with the men- it is a hard job but someone has to do it. (Plus a wedding is even better if the bride asks me to let my type A-ness eek out, so I can yell at the DJ for not getting people on the floor, and grumble to guests who dare disturb her flowers.)
Plus I get to wish a very dear friend all the best in the world as she starts her life with a wonderful man.

So yes I will go to Tuscan in August and Alaska in January... Just don't ask me to catch the damn bouquet! 

An Act of God Clause

The last week has been a little interesting when it comes to natural events, I wish I could blame the earthquake or the hurricane on my lack of posting but really it is just the state of my life (between moving back to DC, school starting, ending one job and starting another, trying to maintain relationships and my sanity. Plus what seems to take more energy (especially emotional) than all else, applying for real jobs you know the kind that pay and therefore allow me to eat food that isn't Ramen and maybe one day pay of my debt. You know dream big.)

But now, after two unusual natural events if God is telling anyone anything it "Kate, write a blog post."* 

I was fine, survived both events with minimal impact or costs and generally feel like it wasn't that big of a deal. The East Coast seems to disagree with me, given that, on my vacation I have seen "I survived" t-shirts and it seems to still be a dominant topic of conversation with my classmates. I have come to the conclusion that east-coasters like to be able to plan their natural disasters, some of my fellow west coasters may disagree with me but I prefer not to know ahead of time.  As someone who was used to earthquakes I felt the shaking, braced myself, checked my surroundings, made sure there wasn't damage or bleeding and got back to work. The rest of the are didn't school (which is in a modern building) was evacuated for hours, metro operated at 15mph. 

Now I understand that the area doesn't get earth quakes so buildings aren't up to the same codes, but I like being prepared. (Also I lived in a "historic" read old and retrofitted building and we never evacuated during an earth quake. Which granted also has something to do with having an innate sense of what is a big deal quake and what isn't.) And I feel like in an area where most of your natural disasters happen with little or no warning people live like boy scouts. They are always prepared, I brought that with me, I have a first aid kit, a battery powered radio and enough food and supplies for a week plus. Going out prior to Irene hitting you would have thought that DC inhabitants lived with bare cupboards most of the time give the number and type of supplies they were buying. (Honestly, I could make some comparison to the Hill and people waiting till the last minute to do what needs to be done)

Mostly what struck me was the way people talked about and experienced these events. There was a level of discussion and frenzy about them stretching on either end that I just am not used to. For most of us living in DC these were relatively minor events, there was some damage to older buildings and we lost power, but not anything different than what you get with a rough winter storm. Mostly I just want to tell people to roll with the punches.

*If you didn't get the sarcasm and political reference, I am kidding god doesn't communicate with me through the weather. And if you want to be prepared here is a good place to start http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/.

Thunder Snow

Beautiful or a death trap?

It is a real thing, I swear. I didn't know it but you can have a thunder storm with snow. Winter weather this year has not approached the craziness of last year and what people who were in DC call "snowmageddon" but it has been a little stressful for little ole coastal me.
Last Tuesday, the day before our big job fair, we had an ice storm and while taking the garbage out I slipped on our front steps and landed on my right arm. I scared the dog with my scream and spent a few hours wondering if I should go to the hospital. Thankfully I am a south paw, although we lefties use our right hands much more than the average right-y uses their left. (for example because of a lack of left handed scissors at my public elementary school I cut with my right hand, even with knives which is weird.) Also importantly for a job fair, we shake hands with our right. (I nearly cried every time someone shook my hand too tight.) Also my lack of range of motion made it really difficult to dress myself. Something that played out as a bit of a comedy of errors as my roommate and I tried to decided what to wear for the job fair.

Our back yard.

My injuries led a friend from home to observe that I may want to choose where I live based on how likely I am to get hurt, given my general klutziness.   
This weeks weather was less dangerous, but more mystifying. Wednesday brought us the previously mentioned "thunder-snow" a whopping seven and half inches of it, and nearly twenty-four hours without power. The loss of power was difficult to deal with. I could read my books as long as the sun was out but once it got to dark there wasn't much I could do. It is do difficult to balance a twenty-five pound law book and take notes by flash light, plus the reading is just not lively enough to keep me engaged in the dark (well except for criminal law, but no one wants to be reading about rape and murder in a cold house with the lights out.) So I caught up on sleep and read a bit of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which is way too good. Honestly law school is getting in the way of my real reading.
So now I sit trying to focus, you can see how well that is going, knowing that all of the school we missed in the last couple of weeks will have to be made up, and thinking snow days must be a lot more fun when you are a kid, but I wouldn't know because where I grew up it is currently seventy two degrees and sunny as my father likes to remind me... I am not jealous at all.

Grace doing a better job braving the snow than I did

Festive Winter Time...

I am feeling the holiday spirit. Notice the tree...

...and the advent calender,

Our tree was a gift from my dad, and while it might verge on being a "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree" I kinda love it. It currently has a Santa Clause, a Cinderella, a Package, a Cloisonne bell my mom brought me from china, a Dog that looks like Grace, a San Francisco skyline, and the ever ubiquitous pickle ornament on it. It is sparse but pretty good considering. It makes the house feel festive, like maybe we care about more than exams. Plus it is kind perfect in all of its sad quirkiness.      

In related festive news it snowed! Okay it was only a comically small amount, but it was enough to quiet the world as I ran. I told my self I didn't have to run on days it was snowing, because I am notoriously uncoordinated. But it was light and beautiful and had yet to make the roads icy. So I went out and let my self enjoy the winter. 

See snow, sorta...
it counts if you grew up on the beach

I have actually discovered that I like the winter, with a few all important caveats: I must be able to wear warm dry clothes when I get inside and I must have a good coat. Also I enjoy it a lot more when there aren't "winter sport people" to push me down hills. And who say things like "it isn't that hard" and "oh it is only a double black diamond called 'a devils death" and "oh wasn't Kate's face funny when she ran into the snow patrol." Haha... like I said I enjoy winter, but that doesn't make it easy for those of us who have difficulty staying on two feet.

The Jersey Shore

I am spending the long wekend on the Jersey shore. But just so there is no confusion my Jersey shore looks a lot more like this... 

than like this...

It is hard to belive that we are only two weeks in, I am already tired. ( I will blame it in part on school deciding to hold a special Friday session and therefore having an extra day of class this week.) Lame especially considering the fact that I would have been able to get out of town a day earlier and avoided the traffic, except with the hurricane coming I guess the shore is dead. Leave it to me to plan a beach vacation for during a huge storm.
Although it seems that now the storm has passed, missing us pretty much completely and now we have beautiful weather and smaller crowds that your usual labor day. It is sort of perfect for my intentions, relax spend time with my family, soak in the calm. I am even caught up on my reading so I only had to bring my computer. (I was able to read a novel today on the beach!) It is shaping up to be a great weekend!

Were having a heat wave...

Okay so I guess it isn't a heat wave if it is August into September, but last week it was so pleasant and I thought "Fall, early, yes please." We even had our air conditioning off, (in an attempt to save some money and the planet.) But then Monday the planet said "Just kidding." And we have been having temperatures in the nineties since the start of the week. This isn't a huge deal, I did sign up to live in what was a swamp not even 250 years ago. No it is the collision of the swamp weather with modern life that is frustrating. I seem to always choose the Metro train that has lost its air conditioning and I always seem to end up seated next to the largest smelliest person on the train. Even that I could live with, I am on Metro for less than an hour every day.
No it is the fact that school seems to think that it is appropriate to cool the building to sixty degrees that drives me nuts. I am in three shirts and a sweater with my legs pulled under me and I am still cold. I am excited about the prospect of fall and reasonable temperatures. Honestly I wish that they would cool it with the cooling it!

So why am I dressed like this? 

What to do when the weather gets bad?

Buy books of course!
Today's weather has been insane. Well maybe not if you are from the East Coast, but for me it is always something that is hard to get used to. I woke up to thunder and lightning, which I love. I get gleeful over counting the time and seeing how far away lightning is striking and I love the sound of rain. To me this is where California weather differs the most from other parts of the world. We have a steady climb to warm weather (although I guess where I am from they haven't had many days even reach the Seventies this summer) and then a steady decline into cold weather and then in the middle of winter we have two months of rain. It is never very extreme, but those winter months do get a little gloomy. There is no quick changeability, it is rare that we get any sort of rain in the summer, and really rare that we ever get thunder and lightning. It was great to be able to enjoy the weather from inside and get some things done.

So I have been working on getting some of the free stuff we have acquired to look presentable (more on that when I can actually upload my photos) but more importantly I was able to buy books. Seeing as class starts in just over a week this really needed to happen. So I went scouring looking for good deals and I did have some luck getting better prices then the campus bookstore. Now I love books, all books, I have a really hard time letting them go. I love the way they smell the way they feel in your hand, how you can watch yourself progress through one via the placement of your bookmark (not that it isn't uncommon for me to finish a book in a sitting.) But I love them as evidenced by my parents house where the majority of the books are mine, being that they are able to clear out clutter, and my father is a Kindle person. (I don't understand Kindle people- I see the appeal, but what would reading be without the page? Your answer: Fanfiction.)So anyway after navigating through sights that want me to "rent" books at a lower price (wait I have to give it back? it has a due date? I can't write in it? So you want me to pay to do what my school library allows me to do for free? No thank you) I don't think I sold back more than  a half dozen of my books for all of undergrad, I love them and after I am done with then I feel like I have formed some sort of strange relationship with them, each of us taking something and leaving our mark. (Wow nerd alert.)
So with all of that in mind I go to buy my books and I end up spending almost as much on them as I did on my Ikea furniture. For four books, nearly 500 dollars, now I am willing to pay it and I am sure, as a book user I will probably get my money's worth, but SERIOUSLY, it was a little painful. Now I just get to stress out over them arriving on time.