Back in the AZ

Wow, sorry that it has been over a month since my last post....things got a little hectic, and then whenever I thought of a good post, I would forget to post....blah blah blah....like y'all care, anyway, I am in Arizona!!!

My college roomie/best friend/partner in crime/hooligan is getting married and I am so excited. I came out a day earlier than everyone else to help with wedding prep stuff, and now am trying to fill the gap in time while she is at her last dance lesson with her fiance (how cute). Another friend, another wedding, another bridesmaids dress for me. The old saying "always the bridesmaid" comes to mind, but honestly I am not worried about it. I am having fun, and being the only single person allows me the leeway I need to be irreverant and basically extemely social....I am not really sure what that means right now, but we shall see.

Anyway everyone arrives tomorrow. The weather is great: hot, sunny, perfect pool weather. So Friday=bachelorette party, Saturday=rehearsal, Sunday=Wedding!!!, Monday=trip back to DC leaving AZ at 5:20am, possibly still drunk, possibly still in my bridesmaids dress, Tuesday=admin exam, Tuesday night=Drunken goodbye to Rebecca and all my friends heading out of town this summer, and then I will post with a summer preview/wedding review.

Mason Madness? George March?

Oh my God!.....Oh my God!!!!!!!!

George Mason, the red-headed stepchild of the public university system in Virginia, the "Patriots," members of the CAA (the Colonial Athletic Association--of which WM is a member), are in the FINAL FOUR of the NCAA Division I basketball tournament.

I never thought I would see the day that a CAA team would make it this far. And since WM is part of the CAA, and our colors are green and gold, and we are in Virginia....I am taking this win and pretending it is my own. I love the underdog, I love the story of it, I love everything about Mason going to the Final Four...if the 'Heels can't be there, if WM can't be there (if that ever happens in my lifetime, I may pass away from shock), then this is close enough for me. Unfortunately due to forces completely beyond my control, I could not watch it, but I was watching live score updates online, and jumping in my seat, when I realized that the scores were not refreshing in real time...so I enlisted Ena over IM to give me the play by play, which she did remarkably. If a day in the library can ever be salvaged by anything, then a #11 seed beating a #1 seed. March Madness really has lived it up to it's name....no #1 seeds in the Final Four, no returning Final Four appearances, upsets, overtimes....best sports time of the year (unless it is this year and it is a World Cup year, and then that is the best sports time, but I know most of you would not agree or understand the beauty).

Well, as my life is slowly deteriorating into nothing of interest to anybody, including me, I will try to post something interesting this week. Vegas recap with pictures will probably never come because apparently relying on others, not a good plan. But there is a new LOST this week and $1 oyster happy hours on Thursdays to fill the time between all of my work.

Welcome Spring..Damn You

Every since I came back from Vegas, I brought back the Vegas weather with me.

"Sunny, 80s....man I would take that!" You say...

But alas, no, the weather in Vegas was very windy and cold with the average in the low 50s, but feeling colder. Well, here in DC it is colder than that and very, very windy, and I am starting to get pissed.

A long time ago, when deciding to apply to law school, I applied to Northeastern University School of Law as my "safety" school, but a safety school I actually could see myself attending. It is in a great college town (Boston), very liberal, very focused on public interest, and had a co-op program that is redefining legal education. Well, I got in, and got an extremely generous funding package from them. Still not sure, I decided I wanted to visit every school I got in to before deciding. I could not go to admitted students day at NEU because I would be visiting my sister in London, so I decided to go a few weeks earlier in mid-March. Well, when I went up there I caught the tail-end of a big snow---what we would probably call a blizzard in RIC. Anyway, that really played into my decision because I do not like cold weather and snow and a place that is cold and snowy into the Spring is unacceptable to me. It was not the only reason, but it was a reason. I cannot lie.

Flash forward two years to present time in DC and guess what, it is freezing. And it snowed last night! A very weird, dry snow that left no trace, but still, snow. It is Spring!!! No snow in the Spring! I am adamant on this point. So adamant that anybody who tries to reason with me will get the wrath of me...especially if they try to reason with me while I am stuck in the Law Review office doing stupid, mindless tasks. Yesterday, this perfectly nice person who is on Law Review with me from Idaho tried to do such a thing. Some random flurries were falling during my work in the office and I exclaimed...."no snow in March!" To which she tried to reason with me: "Well, we did have a mild Winter" Knowing she was from Idaho, and therefore more used to winter weather than I, and that she is on Law Review with me, I decided the best response was: "Fuck that, I don't care, it's Spring!!!" Again, in an extremely patient, reasoning voice she replies, "It is not going to snow that much." Again, though, I decided the best tact to take was an extreme: "I don't care, NO SNOW IN MARCH!!!" I am the queen of maturity and reason.

This weather has been completely unacceptable. I am ready to wear my skirts, flip flops, message t-shirts. I am ready to start feeling warm again. And I am starting to feel that if I was going to have to put up with cold weather and snow in March, I might as well have gone to NEU and be a lot less in debt than I am now.

The [Bad] Luck of the Irish

It is widely known that I do not have the best of luck. I mean, my life is not in such a state of despair that I can never be happy, but a lot of very little things notoriously always go wrong for me. I blame my parents. They seem to have gotten all of the luck of the family. My mom won an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas, my dad wins $10,000 in one of those online lotteries that I am sure is a scam, they rountinely hit bank at the race track, and they are just generally lucky. The most I have ever won at a game of chance is a Subway Station t-shirt at KDR casino night.

In addition to being unlucky at games of chance (see my loss column from the slots in Vegas), I am unlucky in a lot of little "life-dramas" as I like to call them. These "life-dramas" range from the tiny to the absolutely absurd.

For example, it is not secret that I used to be friends with a girl named Beth in college. We were actually pretty good friends. I kept some huge secrets for her, I provided a listening ear for her dramas, we hung out, we laughed....it was good. Until I disagreed with her over one silly point in regards to who should be the leader of a conference (I did say it was silly) and she stopped talking to me, looking at me, and started to say really mean things behind my back--thus earning the nickname my "Archnemesis" coined by Nick. At first this hurt, I will not lie, but I got over it and I saw her for what she really is. After seeing what she really is (manipulative) I realized my life was better without her in it. So I continued on my merry way at WM. I went backpacking with Jen one summer in Italy and as we were sitting outside the entrance to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, whom should I happen to run across but BETH!!!!! It was shocking. Even thousands of miles away, I could not escape. So after that freak encounter, I went back to WM, graduated, started law school, and years have passed without so much as a thought towards Beth in all of that time. Then my friend Chris, who organized the Vegas trip for me, let me know that a girl he was still friends with (Inga) was going to be in Vegas at the same time as we were and she was going to be with her friend.....BETH...dum dum dum!

I basically was like, whatver, Chris asked if I would want to do dinner with Inga and Beth and I said no, because I am sure Beth is still a manipulative bitch and would not want to see me. I get this look from Chris of "that was four years ago, can't you just grow up and drop it?" But I told him that he did not understand the depths of mutual dislike between us. I tell my friends of this coincindence and they assure me that Vegas is big, she is staying at a different hotel, I will be saved from a face to face meeting. Well, that was before my "life-drama" bad luck set in. Sure enough one morning in Vegas, Chris and I decide to get pastries at Paris as that casino was attached to the casino we were staying in. We walk into "Le Cafe" (how very orignal) and I am picking out the perfect chocolate chip muffin when Chris informs me that Beth is there in that very cafe. And seeing as we had seen them and they had seen us, it would be polite for him to go over and say hi. He asks if I could muster the strength to join him, and of course I say I can and walk over. I mean it was four years ago, I am a bigger person than her, and we did share some good times. So we walk over. I wave and say "Hi Beth, Hi Tanja, Hi Traci" to all of the girls sitting at the table (I went to WM with all of them). Beth does not even look at me or acknowledge my presence. Shocking! So while Chris chatted with Inga, I chatted with Tanja and when it was done we went to sit down. Even Chris was shocked by how rude and how openly bitchy Beth was. And I said "I told you so."

Another example of tiny bad luck is another Vegas story: we went to a club where a woman with huge boobs covered by a triangle bikini top and wearing a skirt so short that you could see the red underwear on underneath was pouring shots into peoples' mouths. Clearly everybody at my table wanted one. I was about the third or fourth one to go. The Other Chris was taking pictures of everyone as they were getting the "Wet Pussy" shot poured down their throats. So after she left, Other Chris eagerly showed the pictures to everyone. "But Chris, where is the picture of me getting the shot?" Other Chris: "Oh, I didn't take one." A wave of disappointment rushed over me because it would have been a great shot for my blog, but Chris came to the rescue and said "That will not do! We will get you another shot and take your picture then." Consoled by this consolation prize, I set off to find the shot girl. Bad luck ensues. Oh I did find the shot girl, but Other Chris's camera chose that particular time to break. So no picture of Barbara getting a shot poured down her throat. A small example of bad luck, but an example nonetheless.

My final example of bad luck, in this long and rambling post, occurred just yesterday. After partying hard on St. Patrick's Day, I had to wake up early to go judge a high school moot court competition. Luckily I was able to get a ride home from the people's whose house I crashed at, making the morning rush a bit easier. Of course when I got home to get ready, I got sick--surely still drunk from the night before where I consumed roughly 12 beers, one Irish car bomb, and 3 (maybe 4) cranberry/vodka/club sodas---all with no dinner. Anyway, I digress. To say I was not in the best of shape to judge moot court is putting it lightly. When I get to school and walk into the judge's room, clutching my diet coke and desperately searching for some kind of starch to put in my stomach, who is another judge for the competition that I spy, but asshole ex-bf. Now that is ok, I mean I can handle being in the same room with him, surely out of the eight to ten competition rooms we will get put into different ones.

Wait, what is that I hear? Oh it is bad luck knocking at my door....

Sure enough we get put into the same competition room to judge. The other judge was a cute (married) alum who had no idea of the shitstorm about to happen. Just kidding, nothing too dramatic happened. When I walked in the room to introduce myself to the other judge, ex-bf says in an incredibly asinine way with a stupid smirk on his face "Hello, Barbara" and the other judge paused and was like "You two know each other?" So, seeing no need for pretense, I informed the other judge that we used to date. It was definitely too much information, but I don't care. I mean, I really have nothing to hide, and this other judge needed to realize why I may not look at ex-bf or address him directly. Everything went fine, but of course ex-bf and I found ourselves alone in the judging room for about 10 minutes and he could not let sleeping dogs lie and he had to talk to me. Of course he said something that definitely ranks up there in top ten most stupid things ex-bf has ever said (and he has said some doozies....assumption of the risk comes to mind). I believe in the judging room he actually used to word "disparage" and whether I would "disparage" him. Well, welcome to my blog! Haha. Anyway, I definitely went a little psycho bitch and shut down his lame attempt at a conversation, and that was the last thing I said to him and probably will ever say to him. He just doesn't get a lot of why our relationship ended and he never will, but I guess I will have to live with that.

So anyway, a few small, but poignant examples of my bad luck. There are larger examples too, but they are not as funny as the above and a lot more depressing for me to recount. I do realize, though, that however bad my luck is, I do have it pretty good here, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Happy Ending

Several times in Vegas I heard people, either commentators on TV or random people, say the words "Happy Ending," and like the juvenile that I am, I sniggered every time. I had my massage after I turned in my comment yesterday, and it was amazing, but also unusual for me. See, in Richmond, out of fear of "Happy Endings" there is an ordinance that forbids males from giving a massage to females or females from giving massages to males. Of course, genius--way to combat the prevalent problem of massage parlors fronting as whore houses, Richmond....GOLD STAR! Anyway, since that is the law, I have never had a massage from a male...or at least a professional massage.

Until yesterday! No antiquated notions of massage parlors here in DC! So, as I sat in the Serenity Room, relaxing for my massage, I was a little apprehensive. When you get a massage, you undress to the level you are comfortable with, and normally for me, that means I leave at least something on, but yesterday, I realized that I was comfortable in nothing, so I did that. Basically doing that means, "Please massage my glutei" which I wanted because I have been really tense lately. So my apprehension mainly was coming from the fact that this was going to be the first male massage I have ever received, and it was going to be commando. Well, Julian, my masseur, came to get me from the "Serenity Room" and took me to the massage room, and he decided to break the ice...

Turns out my masseur's name was Julian Marrin (2 r's!). And he found that quite the coincidence. So he says to me, in a really heavy accent..."So, your name is Marrin too, how come?"

For some reason this question struck me as extremely odd. "How come?" I mean, how come anybody has the name they have....I responded, "Because that is my Dad's name." To which he smiled as if talking to a hyperactive, but mentally slow child. "No, no (insert patronizing smile here) I meant, it is a Latin name, are you Latin?"

Which is another question that struck me extremely odd as I am extremely pale, blue eyed, and have red hair (albeit fake red hair, but still). I gave a little patronizing smile of my own at this question and responded "Well I guess it is an Irish name too, because I have not a drop of Latin blood in me." He responds with a look "That is weird, I have never heard of that before." Well, deal with it Julian! Not all Marrins, or Marins, are Latin! Some are Irish, derived from Old French, meaning "Of the Sea!" So take that!

Anyway, the massage was great. The tension from first semester Evidence with Rice, from writing my comment, from sitting on an airplane, from drinking too much, from not having a job, from outrageous medical bills, from losing all my money in Vegas, from basically everything melted off. Julian got over his shock that I was of Irish descent and really worked the tension out of my neck and shoulders. It was the perfect way to celebrate turning in my Comment.

*still waiting on pictures to do a proper Vegas post....my camera is broken, so I have to rely on other's pictures, so it may take some time

I'm Just Looking For Some Sweet Action

"I have never seen a woman guzzle a beer the way you are guzzling beer this afternoon."
--said to me by Christopher, a Pit Boss at Paris Casino

Vegas, baby, Vegas


The reason I have not posted in a few days should now be pretty obvious, I went to VEGAS!!!!! (the reason my blogger seems to be stuck on bold is a different story entirely)

Finally having a friend with a gambling problem and a penchant for finding cheap airfare pays off for me in that I was able to fly out to Vegas and stay in a hotel on the strip for less than what it would have cost me to do anything else. Of course this trip ended up costing me more than what it would cost me to go anywhere else because just like a 5-year-old or a 75-year-old woman with a chain-smoking problem, the lights, sounds, and colors of the slot machines proved absolutely irresistible to me.


A full recap with pictures will come very soon--I have to wait to gather pictures from friends because at the eleventh hour, my camera broke (and the full recap will have to come after I turn in my Comment tomorrow which I have been working oh so hard on), but in the mean time, here are a few highlights/lessons learned:

--drinking + losing money= a v. depressed drunk Barbara (there were times when I could not get it together, but I was having fun, really, I was!)
--a giant margarita in a plastic eiffel tower is a good drink in theory, in practice it can put you into some kind of diabetic coma
--"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" is the best travel ad campaign ever put together...some popular variations of it were "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, unless you are Barbara and tell everyone you know what happened to you at least 10 times over" or "....unless you are Barbara and you put it on your blog"
--if your "arch-nemesis" is in Vegas, you will run into her, and you will be snubbed, but you will come out looking like the gracious one...thank you to morning drinks
--living life like a Real World Vegas cast member has its advantages, like great views and cheap drinks, but also has its disadvantages like getting sick in ghostbar (the count of people who got sick on this trip: 4 for 6, and yes, I was one of them)
--at the nicer casinos you can get drinks just for watching people play blackjack, especially if you act like some kind of "good luck" charm for them by having the strategy card out and advising them and the rest of the table on tough hands
--failing to cancel your reservation at a nice restaurant leads to a $50/person credit at another nice restaurant and a bill that is over $800
--The Venetian is an amazing casino, but not too lucky of one
--men on bachelor parties are fun, even the ones from Iowa
--the fountain at Bellagio is not overrated and is actually a little moving to watch as the sun is setting
--drunk souvenier shopping leads one to buy socks that have french poodles on them
--the Hard Rock Casino, though off the strip, had the cutest clientele and the cutest craps table staff, EVER
--if you cash out a machine at the Tropicana, I hope you practice your lifting because nickels can be heavy
--Tally: Casinos visited: 17, Casinos playes slots at: 14, favorite slot game: monopoly at The Venetian, most profitable slot game: Egyptian Tomb at Barbary Coast
--five days is a little too long to spend in Vegas, but I was still a little sad to leave!

More on the trip after the Comment and after the massage that I have already scheduled after I turn in the Comment.

Wheeling and Squawking

You know how there are people who belong to a certain group/segment of the population, and just their belonging to that group makes you automatically think you will not like them? Yes, it seems like I am about to go into some very non-PC rant about some group of people, and in a way, it may be non-PC, but don't worry, I am not racist, or sexist, or homophobic, I am not talking about hatred, I am talking about annoyance.

One group that I automatically dislike just because I don't understand are bird owners. I don't understand people who choose birds as pets. You cannot cuddle with them, they can't lick you, you can't play with them, take them for walks, watch them chase string. The just sit on their perch and squawk. Or chirp. Both equally annoying when had in a large quanitity. I never really knew how I felt about birds and bird owners until I moved into my apartment. In my "Absolutely No Pets Apartment Building." Apparently that means No Pets except for the crazy lady on my floor who has a bird named Larry. I know his name is Larry because every time she leaves her apartment she says in a shockingly high-pitched, perky voice "I loooooove youuuuuu Larry.....Seeee you soooon!" Once I saw this woman wearing a glowstick as a headband. I could complain, but everytime I get used to it, Larry lets squawks out that sound like someone is sticking him with pins and needles....at 3AM. Apparently you can hear the squawks on the 8th floor, because a classmate who lives up there (I live in a combo dorm/retirement home) asked if I ever hear screaming coming from the park next door. I asked her if it sounded like squawking, and she said yes. I then imitated it, and she said that was it. I could complain, and I should. But I would hate to be that neighbor that turned the poor, crazy, glowstick woman in. I know my other neighbors know about Larry because they help her take care of him. One woman put a poster of birds on her door that I was hoping was a passive-aggressive jibe at bird-lady. But then the other day I came home and she was chatting with bird-lady like they were old pals. So, there you go, one group of people that I forever will never understand and automatically be wary of when I meet them.

The next group are people in the law school who use what I call rolly-bags. These are the bags that students use instead of book bags, and they put all their books and computers in them and then roll them around. Apparently the mere fact that they own and use a rolly-bag is enough to give them license to take the elevator ONE floor either up or down. That is my biggest pet peeve in law school, when you are on the elevator going to 6 and it stops on 5 so a rolly-bag person can go up to 6. The thing is, these bags have handles, and can be lifted. And I have seen several people have to carry their rolly-bags up the stairs in the library as that is the only way to get to the second floor in the library, so I know they are capable of lifting it. This is clearly arbitrary and just another manifestation of my dislike of law school, but really, are you so differently abled that you have to take the elevator everywhere. In truth, this isn't fair, I do have friends who have been know to use rolly-bags, but still, no excuse.

I am sure that I have habits and characteristics that cause people to dislike me without really knowing me. Like the fact that I wear earrings that make jangle sounds when I walk, or I type loudly, or jaywalk on Mass. Ave, or talk loudly about inappropriate subjects in the library, or roll my eyes when annoyed, or.....