Odds and Ends (Bill)
First, I've had this quote in my IM profile for a week or so, but it's so great it deserves a (very slightly) wider audience. I get the daily a.m. update email from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where they provide links to and summaries of their top stories every day, and this was the summary of the second story from the top: Rebekah Dammann was crowned the 52nd Princess Kay of the Milky Way hours before State Fair opened this morning - the first step toward having her likeness carved in butter.
See why I love Minnesota? Carved in butter. And what gets me even more about this is that this tradition goes back only to 1954. In '54, we had ovens and vacuum cleaners and Mickey Mouse and the bomb...and Minnesotans decided to start making butter sculptures. You'd at least figure that we got the idea from our German/Swedish/Norwegian/Czech ancestors or something. But no.
That's beautiful. And I miss the State Fair so much. Sigh.
Second, I found out yesterday that we're taking in about a dozen law students from Tulane in New Orleans. The official stance, apparently, is that we're not advertising or anything, but we're taking in anybody that wants in. I think that's great...although I hope that the dozen that are coming don't plan to practice in Louisiana, which has a radically different system of laws (based on French civil law) from Virginia's and every other state's. But really, I'm proud of the administration here. It's nice to see the compassion that comes out of unexpected places in times like these. That said, times like these suck. I doubt that anyone reading this has even a remote connection to New Orleans, but if you're out there, I'm praying for you.
Miscellany
1. I went to a birthday dinner for a friend at Mellow Mushroom (specificity for Shurrie's benefit only, I suppose...any other C'ville readers, reveal yourselves!) last night. The guest of honor, bless her, was an hour late (computer troubles, mostly), but it was a really good (if relatively short) night anyway. I have some great friends...now they need to get together at times when my wife doesn't have to get up at 5 the next morning so she can know how great they are too. I think we'll have a dinner party sometime soon.
2. We saw The 40 Year-Old Virgin the night it opened (was that two weeks ago?), but I don't remember enough about it to do it justice in a full 30 seconds. It was great fun, and Steve Carell is a genius, but it suffers from the inevitable comparison to Wedding Crashers, another raunchy comedy, less fully developed but somewhat funnier, that beat it to the market by a couple months. CVAA: +1.
3. I'm now making (at least) two trips to Chicago. And I've now gotten two callbacks from interviews that I thought went really poorly. I'm finding that my perception of how well (or not) an interview went was based almost entirely on the interviewer's friendliness and disposition, and had very little to do with my own performance. I also got my first rejection letter, from Sullivan & Cromwell, a big scary monster superfirm in New York. I had no more desire to work there than they did to hire me, so it works out pretty well.
4. I love the word "miscellany." I should use it more often. And "impetus." Oi with the penguins already.
5. I've discovered, five years late, that Gilmore Girls is a really great show. The problems are very often annoyingly trivial and some of the characters are a bit redundant, but the dialogue is brilliant and usually very funny. I'm anxiously awaiting the shipment of the Seasons 1-3 DVDs to keep me busy on the treadmill.
6. I'm such a woman.
7. There's a lot of speculation about what's going to happen to the Saints, if they can't play their home games in New Orleans. I don't know anything about anything, but a caller into a radio show I was half-listening to suggested that they should play them in Los Angeles. Sounded like a good idea to me. There are 9 million or so people in L.A., and I know that not enough of them were football fans to sustain the two teams they did have (or even one of them), but I would think that having 8 games there in one year would be enough of a novelty that they could sell out the place. And it would be especially cool if they could get a good chunk of the proceeds to go directly into the city of New Orleans itself...with the revenue sharing system the NFL has, they should be able to swing that and still keep the Saints healthfully in business. I guess San Antonio is a more likely possibility, but I thought that was a nice idea.
8. I just cannot get going on Fridays, however much I need to. That said, I'm going to try to do some Corporations reading now.
See why I love Minnesota? Carved in butter. And what gets me even more about this is that this tradition goes back only to 1954. In '54, we had ovens and vacuum cleaners and Mickey Mouse and the bomb...and Minnesotans decided to start making butter sculptures. You'd at least figure that we got the idea from our German/Swedish/Norwegian/Czech ancestors or something. But no.
That's beautiful. And I miss the State Fair so much. Sigh.
Second, I found out yesterday that we're taking in about a dozen law students from Tulane in New Orleans. The official stance, apparently, is that we're not advertising or anything, but we're taking in anybody that wants in. I think that's great...although I hope that the dozen that are coming don't plan to practice in Louisiana, which has a radically different system of laws (based on French civil law) from Virginia's and every other state's. But really, I'm proud of the administration here. It's nice to see the compassion that comes out of unexpected places in times like these. That said, times like these suck. I doubt that anyone reading this has even a remote connection to New Orleans, but if you're out there, I'm praying for you.
Miscellany
1. I went to a birthday dinner for a friend at Mellow Mushroom (specificity for Shurrie's benefit only, I suppose...any other C'ville readers, reveal yourselves!) last night. The guest of honor, bless her, was an hour late (computer troubles, mostly), but it was a really good (if relatively short) night anyway. I have some great friends...now they need to get together at times when my wife doesn't have to get up at 5 the next morning so she can know how great they are too. I think we'll have a dinner party sometime soon.
2. We saw The 40 Year-Old Virgin the night it opened (was that two weeks ago?), but I don't remember enough about it to do it justice in a full 30 seconds. It was great fun, and Steve Carell is a genius, but it suffers from the inevitable comparison to Wedding Crashers, another raunchy comedy, less fully developed but somewhat funnier, that beat it to the market by a couple months. CVAA: +1.
3. I'm now making (at least) two trips to Chicago. And I've now gotten two callbacks from interviews that I thought went really poorly. I'm finding that my perception of how well (or not) an interview went was based almost entirely on the interviewer's friendliness and disposition, and had very little to do with my own performance. I also got my first rejection letter, from Sullivan & Cromwell, a big scary monster superfirm in New York. I had no more desire to work there than they did to hire me, so it works out pretty well.
4. I love the word "miscellany." I should use it more often. And "impetus." Oi with the penguins already.
5. I've discovered, five years late, that Gilmore Girls is a really great show. The problems are very often annoyingly trivial and some of the characters are a bit redundant, but the dialogue is brilliant and usually very funny. I'm anxiously awaiting the shipment of the Seasons 1-3 DVDs to keep me busy on the treadmill.
6. I'm such a woman.
7. There's a lot of speculation about what's going to happen to the Saints, if they can't play their home games in New Orleans. I don't know anything about anything, but a caller into a radio show I was half-listening to suggested that they should play them in Los Angeles. Sounded like a good idea to me. There are 9 million or so people in L.A., and I know that not enough of them were football fans to sustain the two teams they did have (or even one of them), but I would think that having 8 games there in one year would be enough of a novelty that they could sell out the place. And it would be especially cool if they could get a good chunk of the proceeds to go directly into the city of New Orleans itself...with the revenue sharing system the NFL has, they should be able to swing that and still keep the Saints healthfully in business. I guess San Antonio is a more likely possibility, but I thought that was a nice idea.
8. I just cannot get going on Fridays, however much I need to. That said, I'm going to try to do some Corporations reading now.