Academic Sunday with Law Students and Dear William
I spent most of today day pretending to be a law student. I called my friends Legally Jessie and Dear William this morning, hoping to score a breakfast invite, but instead, Legally Jessie invited me to the Environmental Law Policy Review Journal Symposium -It's Not Easy Building Green.
I wore my Grownup Fancy Pants to blend in. The have gold sparkles woven into them.
I relished the academic glory of the non-required note taking, and afterwards discussed possible federal strategies for building off-shore wind farms. My brain stretched and yawned a little, as if it had overslept, and waking up felt good. I miss academics, note taking, classrooms, debates. I even miss (dear god) 20-page reading assignments. Can you blame me? I spent twelve years preparing to be a college student, and after five years, I'm supposed to turn away like a dissatisfied lover, never to speak of it again? The hours in the library, the long nights editing papers -it all meant nothing?
But like an ill-fated love affair, academics and I keep coming back toeach other. I just can't resist those sexy seminars, the heavy tomes, the whispered footnotes and murmured historical precedents. Will there be a happy ending to our story? Will I finally settle into an office on a brick-lined campus, surrounded by my books, deeply immersed in academic journals and papers? Or will we keep dancing around each other, meeting secretly at a passionate weekend lecture once a year, cordial friends the rest of the time?
Only time will tell.
Later, I joined Lil' Mikey, Dear William, and Legally Jessie and her Law School Friends at The Trellis for the last night of Restaurant Week. Have you heard about Restaurant Week?? It started in NYC, but most cities have it now. You should go! A bunch of the pressed-napkins and $200-wine-bottle restaurants in a city offer a selection of their menu for cheap-cheap-cheap!
The Trellis's Restaurant Week menu included a soup, chowder or salad, any entree on the menu, any dessert on the menu, and a glass of one of four wines for $30.95. (The cheapest entree on the menu starts at $17, and goes up to $32.) Regrettably, I've always thought the Trellis was a little overblown, and my opinion wasn't altered. The highlight of my potato and fennel soup was the bits of bacon in the bottom, and my chicken and Surrey sausage over wild rice and sauteed butternut and zucchini would have been a thousand times better without the hunk of tender-but -tasteless chicken plopped on top of it. Fortunately, Death By Chocolate never fails.
We were THAT table in the restaurant -crude, boisterous, and loudly liberal. "It's a legitimate question! Why would he cook all those dinners if he wasn't at least hoping to score some action?" "-Are you an umbrella person? -In what context? -I dunno, when it's raining!??!" "I really hope those drag queens walking around campus were William and Mary students. They were gorgeous!" "Have you watched the Jizz in my Pants video??" "Deport anyone who voted for McCain!"
By the end, a table of a father and his daughter had given up on conversation, and were just listening and laughing. I'm amazed we didn't get more dirty looks.
DW (Dear William) and I watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil afterward, not feeling up to shotgunning beer and chugging wine with our friends at the Ironman Triathalon. It's a strange film about a strange people in a strange town -Savannah, Georgia. The South is nutso! Films like that make me wish I'd been born with a drawl.
I wore my Grownup Fancy Pants to blend in. The have gold sparkles woven into them.
I relished the academic glory of the non-required note taking, and afterwards discussed possible federal strategies for building off-shore wind farms. My brain stretched and yawned a little, as if it had overslept, and waking up felt good. I miss academics, note taking, classrooms, debates. I even miss (dear god) 20-page reading assignments. Can you blame me? I spent twelve years preparing to be a college student, and after five years, I'm supposed to turn away like a dissatisfied lover, never to speak of it again? The hours in the library, the long nights editing papers -it all meant nothing?
But like an ill-fated love affair, academics and I keep coming back toeach other. I just can't resist those sexy seminars, the heavy tomes, the whispered footnotes and murmured historical precedents. Will there be a happy ending to our story? Will I finally settle into an office on a brick-lined campus, surrounded by my books, deeply immersed in academic journals and papers? Or will we keep dancing around each other, meeting secretly at a passionate weekend lecture once a year, cordial friends the rest of the time?
Only time will tell.
Later, I joined Lil' Mikey, Dear William, and Legally Jessie and her Law School Friends at The Trellis for the last night of Restaurant Week. Have you heard about Restaurant Week?? It started in NYC, but most cities have it now. You should go! A bunch of the pressed-napkins and $200-wine-bottle restaurants in a city offer a selection of their menu for cheap-cheap-cheap!
The Trellis's Restaurant Week menu included a soup, chowder or salad, any entree on the menu, any dessert on the menu, and a glass of one of four wines for $30.95. (The cheapest entree on the menu starts at $17, and goes up to $32.) Regrettably, I've always thought the Trellis was a little overblown, and my opinion wasn't altered. The highlight of my potato and fennel soup was the bits of bacon in the bottom, and my chicken and Surrey sausage over wild rice and sauteed butternut and zucchini would have been a thousand times better without the hunk of tender-but -tasteless chicken plopped on top of it. Fortunately, Death By Chocolate never fails.
We were THAT table in the restaurant -crude, boisterous, and loudly liberal. "It's a legitimate question! Why would he cook all those dinners if he wasn't at least hoping to score some action?" "-Are you an umbrella person? -In what context? -I dunno, when it's raining!??!" "I really hope those drag queens walking around campus were William and Mary students. They were gorgeous!" "Have you watched the Jizz in my Pants video??" "Deport anyone who voted for McCain!"
By the end, a table of a father and his daughter had given up on conversation, and were just listening and laughing. I'm amazed we didn't get more dirty looks.
DW (Dear William) and I watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil afterward, not feeling up to shotgunning beer and chugging wine with our friends at the Ironman Triathalon. It's a strange film about a strange people in a strange town -Savannah, Georgia. The South is nutso! Films like that make me wish I'd been born with a drawl.