The USA Took My Baby Away
Operation No Really, Study Real Hard Now kicks in Sunday, after I have some fun on the Fourth of July. Traditionally, post-July 4 is when you're supposed to ramp up studying and just not leave your room/library nook/office at all, favoring 10-hour days. I have not been studying Real Hard since becoming perhaps too convinced by a pep talk lecture at the beginning of last week that convinced me unduly that I can in fact pass this exam. But there's so much to do, and I have so little desire to do it. I need to get back some of the stress that caused me to have two freak-outs prior to the pep talk. The exam starts July 28. Don't ask me to do anything this month because I'm not gonna (except, apparently, for hosting a Schwern and ferrying him to OSCON and back), though I appreciate being asked because this process is really fucking isolating.
Anyway I've been going out way too much and I need to cut out the socializing and the booze and try to get more sleep, as I average about 5 hours a night. I simply cannot get to sleep for whatever reason, and I cannot drag that negative energy into the tournament, in the parlance of our times. (How to sleep enough the nights preceding the three days of testing is one of my major worries, along with eating something for breakfast or lunch that causes me severe intestinal distress, because diarrhea would be a really stupid reason to fail. Oh, believe me, besides all the "you didn't study hard enough" reasons why I might fail, I can come up with lots of others.)
I will have you know that I made a Spanish/English pun to myself today at the end of our Community Property lecture. We learned about "putative spouses," which is where you think you're legally married but you're not. If you didn't know, you get marriage-type rights. If you did know you weren't lawfully married, you're treated like unmarried cohabitants, and you can only get contractual relief. We had just learned that while contract-type relief is what unmarried cohabitating partners can get when they split up, courts will not enforce contractual agreements between cohabitating partners that are based solely on sexual services ("If you move in with me as my sex slave, I'll give you a one-half interest in all my earnings"). So my pun was, you get contract-type relief if you're not married to your partner and you're neither a putative spouse nor... wait for it... a puta spouse.
...It was funny to me. Hey, I can make bad jokes in Spanish, this bodes well for Puerto Rico!
Speaking of which, the relocation to la isla del encanto is underway. The United States Government took my car today. By which I mean a government contractor's subcontractor's subcontractor took my car. Dealing with the Administrative Office of the United States Courts has been an eye-opening lesson in the vertical and horizontal organization of private entities that exist to support federal employee relocation. One entity has my car. Another put out the bid for hauling my car which was accepted by the entity that now has my car. Another is packing up and taking away my worldly belongings next week. A fourth is my point of contact for the car and household goods move coordination. And a fifth has been nothing but helpful in trying to get me booked on an airplane, until the AO butted in with the rude realization that the government will not, in fact, pay to transport my cats.
This led to rather a lot of Entitled Girl Is Entitled sulking since I found out this fact yesterday, along with losing sleep last night trying to figure out what to do instead. (This is not a request for advice; please don't give any unless you have actually dealt with this exact situation yourself.) Why the government would pay for my spouse and kids to relocate if I had any, and will ship my car and let me ship up to 18000 pounds of household goods (as though I owned a mansion full of solid oak furniture and perhaps an Easter Island giant basalt head besides), and will insure the lot of it, but won't deal with pets, which last I checked were an important part of many people's families, is beyond me. But I can't really say such things, can I, because of a) selfish entitlement ("Hey, at least you have a job," I already got told), b) this is what pet ownership means - you buy the ticket, you take the ride, and c) when you're a single woman of Official Spinster Age according to Jane Austen, you're not supposed to talk about your cats like they're important to you, lest you come off as pathetic. "Don't you know anyone else who's going to be on that flight?" the travel agent asked me - since the proposed plan is for me to buy an entire second seat on the flight on my own dime, plus pay the $100 pet fee for both that seat and my seat, which the government does pay for. No. No, I don't randomly know somebody else flying to fucking San Juan, of all places, on the same flight; I am in Fremont, not Spanish Harlem. If I needed a second seat because someone was moving with me, I wouldn't need cats for emotional validation, would I?
So yeah, they're coming to schlep my shit in a week, except I'm really not shipping much - some books, the clothes I don't need to keep with me for now, my stereo and DVD & music collection (not all on my laptop! shocking!), a few other things. My childhood bed and desk, plus most of my books (and warm clothes!), will stay right here in this room, so I won't be deprived of creature comforts while Studying Real Hard. My San Juan apartment's furnished and I've moved around enough that I abandon my furniture whenever I leave a city. Having a real moving company instead of needing to fit everything in a single trip in a VW Golf is a sign I may be a Respectable Adult soon, and not the Romany Rye of the last few years.
Speaking of Jane Austen, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies just now. Overall I think I could've just read the original again and been very well satisfied, since P&P&Z is a one-joke deal. Like every Onion story ever written, it would've been better to just have a headline and no follow-up. Also the ties to Colin Firth and from thence Bridget Jones are only serving to deepen the spinster-with-cats feeling.
So, the to-do list for July:
1. Hard work
2. Gratitude
3. Humility paired with adequate self-confidence
4. Herding actual cats
5. Not hanging out
6. Self-care
See you July 31st.
Anyway I've been going out way too much and I need to cut out the socializing and the booze and try to get more sleep, as I average about 5 hours a night. I simply cannot get to sleep for whatever reason, and I cannot drag that negative energy into the tournament, in the parlance of our times. (How to sleep enough the nights preceding the three days of testing is one of my major worries, along with eating something for breakfast or lunch that causes me severe intestinal distress, because diarrhea would be a really stupid reason to fail. Oh, believe me, besides all the "you didn't study hard enough" reasons why I might fail, I can come up with lots of others.)
I will have you know that I made a Spanish/English pun to myself today at the end of our Community Property lecture. We learned about "putative spouses," which is where you think you're legally married but you're not. If you didn't know, you get marriage-type rights. If you did know you weren't lawfully married, you're treated like unmarried cohabitants, and you can only get contractual relief. We had just learned that while contract-type relief is what unmarried cohabitating partners can get when they split up, courts will not enforce contractual agreements between cohabitating partners that are based solely on sexual services ("If you move in with me as my sex slave, I'll give you a one-half interest in all my earnings"). So my pun was, you get contract-type relief if you're not married to your partner and you're neither a putative spouse nor... wait for it... a puta spouse.
...It was funny to me. Hey, I can make bad jokes in Spanish, this bodes well for Puerto Rico!
Speaking of which, the relocation to la isla del encanto is underway. The United States Government took my car today. By which I mean a government contractor's subcontractor's subcontractor took my car. Dealing with the Administrative Office of the United States Courts has been an eye-opening lesson in the vertical and horizontal organization of private entities that exist to support federal employee relocation. One entity has my car. Another put out the bid for hauling my car which was accepted by the entity that now has my car. Another is packing up and taking away my worldly belongings next week. A fourth is my point of contact for the car and household goods move coordination. And a fifth has been nothing but helpful in trying to get me booked on an airplane, until the AO butted in with the rude realization that the government will not, in fact, pay to transport my cats.
This led to rather a lot of Entitled Girl Is Entitled sulking since I found out this fact yesterday, along with losing sleep last night trying to figure out what to do instead. (This is not a request for advice; please don't give any unless you have actually dealt with this exact situation yourself.) Why the government would pay for my spouse and kids to relocate if I had any, and will ship my car and let me ship up to 18000 pounds of household goods (as though I owned a mansion full of solid oak furniture and perhaps an Easter Island giant basalt head besides), and will insure the lot of it, but won't deal with pets, which last I checked were an important part of many people's families, is beyond me. But I can't really say such things, can I, because of a) selfish entitlement ("Hey, at least you have a job," I already got told), b) this is what pet ownership means - you buy the ticket, you take the ride, and c) when you're a single woman of Official Spinster Age according to Jane Austen, you're not supposed to talk about your cats like they're important to you, lest you come off as pathetic. "Don't you know anyone else who's going to be on that flight?" the travel agent asked me - since the proposed plan is for me to buy an entire second seat on the flight on my own dime, plus pay the $100 pet fee for both that seat and my seat, which the government does pay for. No. No, I don't randomly know somebody else flying to fucking San Juan, of all places, on the same flight; I am in Fremont, not Spanish Harlem. If I needed a second seat because someone was moving with me, I wouldn't need cats for emotional validation, would I?
So yeah, they're coming to schlep my shit in a week, except I'm really not shipping much - some books, the clothes I don't need to keep with me for now, my stereo and DVD & music collection (not all on my laptop! shocking!), a few other things. My childhood bed and desk, plus most of my books (and warm clothes!), will stay right here in this room, so I won't be deprived of creature comforts while Studying Real Hard. My San Juan apartment's furnished and I've moved around enough that I abandon my furniture whenever I leave a city. Having a real moving company instead of needing to fit everything in a single trip in a VW Golf is a sign I may be a Respectable Adult soon, and not the Romany Rye of the last few years.
Speaking of Jane Austen, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies just now. Overall I think I could've just read the original again and been very well satisfied, since P&P&Z is a one-joke deal. Like every Onion story ever written, it would've been better to just have a headline and no follow-up. Also the ties to Colin Firth and from thence Bridget Jones are only serving to deepen the spinster-with-cats feeling.
So, the to-do list for July:
1. Hard work
2. Gratitude
3. Humility paired with adequate self-confidence
4. Herding actual cats
5. Not hanging out
6. Self-care
See you July 31st.