Oil Change

Last week I went somewhere to get my oil changed. There are only 8 things I hate worse than getting my oil changed (8. Moving, 7. My foot disease, 6. Wet locker room floors, 5. Animals, 4. The Blackberry Pearl, 3. Swimming laps in a pool, 2. Laundry, 1. Grocery Shopping). This is partly because I have no idea what I'm doing when I walk into these places. Normally I have a little pep-talk with myself before I go in, sometimes driving around the block two or three times to make sure I get through it. It usually goes something like this: "O.k. son. It's just an oil change. These people can't ruin your life unless you let them. It's o.k. to say 'no' if they offer you something you don't want. Be firm. You are a strong person. That doesn't have to change just because a bunch of men covered in grease are yelling at you using words you don't understand in a small dirty room that smells like popcorn, cars, and coffee. Why on Earth do they offer popcorn in there anyway? Do people actually dig a handful of oily popcorn out of that machine that clearly hasn't been cleaned since 1975 and has black fingerprints all up and down the sides? By the way, you need to stop by the grocery store on the way home and get some milk. Might as well pick up a couple of bags of Peanut M&M's while you're there. Oh, and apples."

Once the pep-talk has taken place, I go inside and do my best to make them think I know all about cars but I'm just having them change my oil because I'm too busy to do it myself. Employee then looks at my car for 3.2 seconds and then approaches me with a long list of things that he swears up and down have got to be fixed that day or several small children in China will die. Usually, in an attempt to feel like someone who actually takes care of his car, I choose one of the things on the list to agree to while declining the rest against employee's judgmental head shakes and warnings. I then sit down in the waiting room again with stale popcorn and girl with giant bump-it Utah hair who is screaming into a cell phone about how cute someone else's hair and shoes are. Then employee walks back in and calls out that they are finished with the Sentra. I pause for 23 seconds and look around the room to see if anyone else is going to claim it because I never can remember what kind of car I drive when I'm put on the spot like that in front of so many people. When I finally check out, I always end up paying somewhere around twice the amount I had anticipated. Oil change place, one. Eli, zero. I get into my car and before doing anything else I quickly study the new sticker they've placed on the windshield, telling me the exact date they expect to see me again. I consider it the new dooms day. Another day to dread, now months away. And I speed away promising myself next time will be different.

But last week something special happened, throwing me into a whole new routine. I stopped by the place on my way home from work. I was dressed in what I thought was classy business casual, complemented with my favorite green socks. When employee came into the waiting room to get me, he looked me up and down and said in a voice reserved for breaking bad news, "Oh, it must be laundry day."

Eli: Huh?
Employee: Laundry day. Because of how you're dressed.
Eli: Yeah . . . What?
Employee: Well I just mean . . . obviously you're wearing that.
Eli: You mean my green socks?
Employee: Oh yeah, the socks too.
Eli: Too?
Employee: No offense. I think it's great man! I love it when people dress however they want, whenever they want.
Eli: Well I don't dress like this all the time. I'm just coming from work.
Employee: Oooooooohhhhhhh. Do you work at a call center or somewhere where they don't care about how you look.
Eli: . . . So how's that oil change coming?

For obvious reasons, I would like to officially award "Oil Change Employee" the "Tellin-it-like-it-is" award.

Getting my oil changed is darn near moving between wet locker room floors and animals on my list of things I hate. Darn near it.

~It Just Gets Stranger

Shigella's

To catch up a bit, the semester finally ended (much later than it was scheduled to go). The week after finals I was packed away in a tiny prison cell for five straight days frantically trying to bust out a nightmare of a paper we'll just call "Satan" before returning, for the 256,127th time (give or take 4) to the Contract paper beast I feel I have sacrificed any hope for a social life to complete since January. Sometime toward the end of that fiasco, I packed up everything I own (which currently consists of a paperback "Crime and Punishment," sheets, mismatched art and souvenirs from various third world countries, leftover prescription medications that have all gotten mixed up and are now a part of what I like to call "the surprise variety pack," that horrible lice-ridden shirt I bought in Mexico a year and a half ago, 10 toothbrushes, and enough pin-striped slacks to clothe several impovrished countries) and moved to Uncle Will's basement in Salt Lake to start my new job.

The move did not go without drama, unfortunately, as exactly 37 minutes after arriving at Uncle Will's house I abruptly ran my car into the side of his garage. Fortunately he wasn't home at the time which gave me a few minutes to gain composure, clean up the pile of debris (which by the way seemed to be more massive than the pre-crash car was itself) and quickly try to come up with a story that began "you won't believe what happened!" and ended "and that's why none of this was my fault." Fortunately and miraculously the big crash did absolutely no damage to Will's house, causing me to forfeit what may have been the most sensible plan: to immediately drive back to Provo and call Will to tell him I wasn't going to make it after all. Also, miraculously, Krishelle and I were able to use bright-red duct tape we found in Will's garage to bandage the vehicle back together so that it no longer looked like a recent participant of a monster-truck show. This was a huge relief as I was absolutely convinced immediately after it happened that the mysterious they would have to tow my car, along with half the neighborhood, to the nearest junkyard.

48 hours later I received my very first ever speeding ticket. Two weeks shy of my 10-year driving anniversary, they finally caught me (I like to look at my relationship with the police as a hostile fugitive situation). Pathetically, the ticket was for going five over down a street on which I thought I was actually going too slow.

Naturally I was more than ready to ditch the country for Mexico with Krishelle and Will last Wednesday. I was warned that the town we were going to, San Felipe, had not had fresh edible food since an accidental delivery in 1967 but I thought all would be well as I've got pretty low standards anyway (but not as low as my last roommate who I saw one Sunday afternoon eat a cold hotdog covered in cheese from a can, mustard, mayo, sour cream, and wrapped with two different kinds of lunch meat, causing me to give up food for 40 days even though Lent was months away). Wrong. Immediately after arriving in San Felipe, several hours south of the border and away from anywhere with people, we plopped down in a restaurant that every major world humanitarian organization would put all efforts into shutting down if the roads to San Felipe were reasonably driveable by something other than army tanks, and ordered what seemed to be the safest option on the menu. Something, which I am now convinced had literally been eaten at least two times before, was molded into the shape of a burrito and delivered to us on a cracked and stained plate. We spent much of that afternoon laying on our backs, moaning and wondering whether we would ever be able to eat again. Sometime around 4:00 Will informed us that it wasn't a surprise that we all felt sick as that was the exact restaurant that gave him Shigella six years ago, which the doctor told him he had gotten from consuming someone's feces (that only explained part of the flavor. Oddly, everything we ate in San Felipe tasted like seafood, and not the good kind of seafood but the kind that that kid in the first grade used to refer to in his daily joke at lunch when he would say, "Do you want 'see food'?" And then he would open his mouth and point at the chicken-fried steak soaked in expired chocolate milk he had just gnawed through. His name was probably Brad). Krishelle and I both gave Will blank stares for the next 12 minutes, wondering why on Earth anyone would ever return to a restaurant that gave them Shigella. Then I remembered how many times I've gone back to Beto's and it suddenly didn't seem so crazy.

We then spent the next several days laying on a gorgeous hot beach, making our best efforts to do absolutely nothing (including returning to the restaurant that we had now nick-named "Shigella's").

And now here we are. Work has been great and the break from school has been nice. Here's hoping for an exciting and strange summer-

~It Just Gets Stranger

2L

The final final ran its course on Monday morning. I came out of the test, got cornered into an awkward and slightly contentious conversation regarding some of the most recent and most frustrating law school drama, and then almost literally RAN out of the doors. Tragically I was back mere hours later doing research for my professor and facing the reality that is my substantial writing paper, which I have high hopes of finishing this week. And here we are.


This week has been all about saying goodbye to 2L. Feeling some of the premature nostalgia for the experiences and friendships that I'll miss. Trying to cope with some of the bigger disappointments. Taking in how much this year has changed me. I've been trying to figure out how to write this post in a way that truly represents what's in my burned-out head. I'm not sure I'm a good enough writer to be able to do that.

Who knew that 2L would turn out the way it did? I didn't. It was far more exciting and dramatic than I ever expected. It was more fun and stressful that I thought it would be. More ups and downs than I hoped for. More hours than I anticipated. More emotional exhaustion than I thought possible. More satisfying than I believed it would be.

But 2L was hard. It was really really hard. And even now as I type this, I can feel the weight of the 2L year on my face, on my shoulders, and in my head. I'm a very different person now than I was one year ago. More jaded in some ways. More aware. More sensitive. Less sensitive. More consumed with battling and trying to understand the fine line between hope and realistic expectations.

2L taught me that one giant disappointment doesn't have to mean that all future goals are impossible. At least it taught me to hope for that. It taught me that challenges are much easier when good friends are consistent. It taught me that sometimes spending time with my family on a Sunday afternoon is better than comfort food. It taught me that hard work is satisfying but it comes at a cost. And at the very very end it finally started to succeed in teaching me a lesson it attempted to teach me all year--that a person needs balance in their life. Yes, it did take all the way to the bitter end for this to begin to click.

This was the year of grueling competitions. This was the year of the Swine Flu and Surgery. This was the year interviewing. The year of staying at school until all hours of the night to meet deadlines. The year of income tax law. The year of laughing hysterically with some of my closest friends about some of our most embarrassing shared experiences. The year of using Corey's phone to text myself compliments and apologies that she would never have sent in real life in order to show the whole school. The year of party planning with Annette between our frantic struggle to master the federal income tax system after our other friends bailed on us for an equally miserable IP Moot Court class. The year of sitting in study rooms for hours on end with Jeff to practice closing arguments and Moot Court problems until we had that ringing sound in our ears (Tinnitus?). The year of accidentally running 15 miles up the canyon with Joe despite not having exercised for a month or two. The year of plotting with Corey about how we could become best friends with all of our professors. The year of accidentally telling an interviewer that I once ran a 2:15 marathon. The year of saying hello and goodbye to new and old friends.

As I sit here now at the law building while my friends around me clean out their carrels and excitedly talk about their summer plans, my feelings are mixed. I'm a bit somber. I'm excited too. Nervous and unsure. I wonder what this summer is going to be for each of us. How we'll all be so different when we next see each other, four months from now, after returning from all parts of the earth with another summer of intense legal work in the real world under our belts. I'll miss them. And I suppose this is just a preview of a much more permanent break that we'll all experience one year from now.

It's time to close this chapter. This chapter opened 12 months ago as I set off excitedly for Russia. Looking back on that now, I see a person who really had no idea what the next 12 months would bring. And it makes me wonder what will unexpectedly transpire in the next 12 months. I hope that whatever it is, it will be exciting, in a good way. Interesting, in a good way. And a little bit stranger, which doesn't come any way but good.

So farewell my dear friend, Mr. 2L.

~It Just Gets Stranger

Two Down, One To Go

The trusts final was on Friday. Naturally in the usual law school fit of academic bulimia, I binged on trust doctrine for two and a half days and then subsequently purged for two and a half hours. Another one out of the way.

The rest of the weekend has been consumed with preparations for the next final which is on Monday. Professional Responsibility. Working on becoming ethical one rule at a time. 10,000 rules that essentially all say the same thing ("never tell a lie") in 10,000 different ways pollute a 200 page rule book that every law student across the country gets tested and then ranked on in their various law schools. The more ways you understand that you're not supposed to lie, the higher your class ranking.

Here's to looking forward for this to end. Not law school. Just 2L. It had a good run, but it's got to end. The longer we stay crammed in that building for 36 hours a day, the more we each become increasingly self-absorbed and grumpy. Many are at wits end. Not to mention, Library Body Syndrome (LBS) has taken its toll on us all. It's not pretty.

~It Just Gets Stranger

One Down, Two To Go

I am one final in and on the eve of final two. My brain is totally fried and I'm almost past feeling. So business as usual. Beyond the usual stresses of finals, the last couple of weeks have not been a walk in the park, full of some nasty politicking and a few depressing letdowns. This, of course, has all been just an expected climax of hands-down the roughest, most emotionally exhausting academic year of my life. More on the end of year thoughts later . . .

But for now, the focus is on finals. My study group and I have been crammed in tiny rooms for roughly 18 hours a day for a couple of weeks now, first frantically trying to wrap our heads around several constitutional amendments for our Criminal Procedure exam on Tuesday, and since then, Trusts.



On Sunday, in anticipation of what I knew was going to be another one of "those" weeks, I thought I should take a couple Ambien to make sure to sleep well at least one night. I sure did. And thanks to my new "climb into bed immediately after taking Ambien" rule, I thought I had gotten through the experience without doing anything too embarrassing. Wrong. On Monday afternoon I received a text message from my friend Jenna, prompting me to check out my outgoing texts from the night before. I then found the following two outgoing texts (which I absolutely have NO recollection of sending):


Text number 1: 10:24 PM "Wonderful. If I wasn't doped up on two ambien ruiht now I would join you. Crim pro rhymes with ho don't you know. I cably read this rugth now."


Text number 2: 10:29 PM "I want to start a busunraza teaching yoga to yoda so he can take a chilln pull ASAP. That nope knows what it means mpattly geese goose."


I then promptly scanned my call record to make sure there were no phone calls made as well, (like, say, to my professors or anyone else I absolutely should NOT be calling after taking Ambien late at night).


I happened to notice an incoming phone call from the week before from a friend that I don't remember talking to for several months. The phone call had connected for several minutes. After tracking this friend down, I was told that we had had a nice conversation the week before. One in which I babbled about tennis and South American politics (both topics I have no business discussing even on my most alert days) for a while before hanging up and climbing into bed.


Well I'll cut it off here. Trusts isn't learning itself (hopefully I studied a whole bunch last time I took Ambien).


~It Just Gets Stranger

Boston

I really don't have time for this right now but if I let time keep passing without posting something, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

My moot court partner Jenna and I just returned from a competition in Boston that we have been preparing for since December. It was an incredible experience and we prepared well. We don't have our final scores yet but we ended up in the top eight teams (out of about 40). Other than competing for a few long days in front of some aggressive liberal judges, we ate every piece of sea-food known to man and said the same six phrases in horrible Bostonian accents on cue every two minutes for four days (of course laughing every time like it was the first).

While I was in Boston my baby sister ejected a child from her body (her first). The labor was long and really hard but she came through like a champ resulting in a darn cute little baby girl. Said sister has been in a lot of pain with kidney stones and gall stones for several months. Additionally, she started having contractions about four years before she even knew she was pregnant so she had had it by the time the baby finally came. Now that that's all settled, I'm trying to talk her into passing all of her various stones so she can make a necklace out of them. She hasn't agreed to that yet. By the way, special shout out to her super human abilities: apart from dealing with everything I just mentioned, she took and passed her boards mere days before the baby finally came in order to be a certified registered nurse (a test that I understand isn't easy). Now that we know she has it in her to successfully deal with so many terrible things at once, we're going to start expecting a lot more from her.

In other news, I finally got my job situation figured out. After resorting to house hunting options in Hawaii and checking for the best deals on flights to Eastern Europe where I planned to go work my way through the summer doing odd jobs for strangers, a pretty cool opportunity with the Attorney General appellate office in Salt Lake fell upon me. It was a rough four days in which I had to make a decision but I accepted it and I'm really looking forward to the work. I had hoped to go somewhere exotic, mostly to work on my "get a full body massage in every country of the world" goal, but I'm very grateful to have a good job and a future full of some interesting experiences.

Now I'm frantically trying to cram thousands of pages of knowledge into my head before finals start in less than two weeks. (How is it time again already???). At least this time I have TWO hands to combat the beast.

~It Just Gets Stranger

Insomnia

I've had sleeping problems for several years. Surprisingly law school has seemed to make it worse. Fortunately I have found that if I block out every bit of light, sound, and memories, and choose a night when I'm already really tired and don't have anything going on the next day, I can get myself to fall asleep sometime near the witching hour. Unfortunately, those stars rarely seem to align. Thank heavens for sleeping medicine. I think.

I recently started trying new things to deal with my Insomnia, which has been great for my "get to the end of 'Crime and Punishment' by 2025" goal. In fact, three nights ago I pulled the book out at 2:00AM and read four whole pages. I'm now a little over half-way done. Who knew when I picked up that little piece of heaven five years ago that I would ever make it this far. (By the way, for those of you who were wondering, I'm on the part where Raskolnikolinolifof is talking to Raskolnofitofikofinonof about his friend Sonya Rolinoloninof and her friend Rockstockitockitof and their relation to Rimolinolitof; it's getting pretty juicy).

Back to the drugs: I've gotten my hands on several kinds of medications, herbs, and various other therapeutic witch-doctor remedies that my drug-loving-family-members and hippie-save-the-planet friends could convince me to take and the only thing that seems to have an affect on me is Ambien. Oh blessed Ambien. Last month I took one and woke up the next morning only to find I had inadvertently done my taxes (good think I'm not a huge audit risk as I only made 12 cents last year). Last week after taking an Ambien, I ate half a bag of ginger-snap pees while doing Yoga stretches and telling my roommates that their faces were fuzzy. While that experience wasn't quite as productive as filing my taxes was, it did make for a few good stories (which is what my family lives for).

Mostly I'm writing this post as an desperate plea for help. Is there anyone out there who has overcome Insomnia through means other than drugs that can share their wisdom with me? I would prefer to never take a sleeping pill again but I've got to get my sleep as I'm starting to really age (I look well over 21 now).

~It Just Gets Stranger

The Calm Before The Storm

I had the week off last week so Krishelle, Uncle Will and I decided to head south and just drive until the weather became acceptable. Fully expecting the possibility of having to drive as far as Guatemala, I packed several weeks of clothes and some Cipro and we were off. Naturally, as is always the case with any trip we ever take, no real plans were made before entering the vehicle. And we didn't think we would need any kind of map, especially after deciding to go see the Grand Canyon, as we figured the largest hole on Earth should be pretty easy to find. Wrong.

But our general lack of any sense of direction drew us into a town called Seligman which I believe you can only find if you're not trying to find it. We met all four people that live there (rather, we were given the stink eye by three skeptical residents; the fourth gave us a key to our motel room at 1:00 in the morning at a place that hadn't had any guests since the Gold Rush). The next morning we drove around, back and forth, back and forth, until one woman eventually pointed the way to the Grand Canyon, which we looked at for exactly three minutes and twenty-two seconds before getting back in the car, turning until the little "S" appeared on the dash, and flooring it for the next six hours. Meet Tucson.

In Tucson we attempted to go two full days without moving. Mostly a success (I say "mostly" due to the implausibility of packing and using catheters).

Saturday we thought it would be a good idea to cross the border into Mexico in an attempt to witness the drug wars first hand. After experiencing a disappointing lack of action and one horrific burrito smothered in what seemed to be a mixture of runny mayo, sour cream, and some kind of egg puree that had been sitting out in the sun for way too many fiestas, we made our assent back into the mother land.

Reality hit on Monday morning when the professor I do research with called me and said in a panicked voice, "I need to own every minute you have this week." Apparently she wasn't kidding. 78 emails and three 18 hour work days later (I'm actually not exaggerating), we have seemed to produce a pretty decent presentation. Unfortunately I had a perfect storm of other extremely time consuming activities come to a head in the last three days--all contributing factors to the 18 hour days (thank heavens for 24 hour access to the law building. I think.).

So here we are.

I'm not always sure what all the sacrificing is supposed to achieve. I only know that if I stop working, the unproductivity will feel much less satisfying. Maybe that's just a result of an abnormal amount of energy. Maybe all this energy I seem to dig out of every corner is ironically taking me to an early grave. Or maybe it's just all going toward some bigger cause that on weeks like this I start to have a hard time remembering. Not really sure what I'm trying to articulate tonight. Just hoping that all the distractions don't cause any of us to stop savoring the stranger moments of our sometimes chaotic lives.

~It Just Gets Stranger

The Feeding Room

I attended a wonderful conference for the J. Reuben Clark Law Society for the last three days. This is where Mormon attorneys and law students gather in one place to hear 40 different people give the exact same rendition of the history of the founding of both the society and BYU Law School. In addition to the speeches, the society serves around the clock meals to the hundreds in attendance. As a part of this endeavor, one room in the center of the frighteningly gigantic institute building at the University of Utah campus was designated solely for the purpose of feeding. The tables spanning the length of the room were consistently piled high with mounds of food, replenished almost magically for three days. Naturally, I spent the vast majority of the conference in this room. So did my friend Sarah who started on the opposite end of the longest table from where I began my animal-like mastication yesterday afternoon, meeting 45 minutes later at the middle somewhere near the over-sized muffins. Because of our firm dedication to testing the limits of this mysterious room, I have decided to add another row onto my resume under the service section for my help at this years JRCLS conference. My contribution: "food". If asked during an interview what I specifically worked on in regards to the food, I'll just tell them it was mostly consumption and clean-up. Mark my words: in two weeks time, I will have a job.

~It Just Gets Stranger

Baked Potato Recall

Last week was sort of strange. That is, even without driving two hours north to view a jump-rope show put on by a bunch of kids in bright orange shirts, last week was strange.

This had a lot to do with my friend Corey who, out of the goodness of her heart, brought dozens of baked potatoes wrapped in tin-foil to school to hand out in what looked like an odd attempt to turn BYU Law into a soup kitchen (which may be fitting very soon if more of us don't start finding jobs). Her explanation: someone gave her over one hundred potatoes--so naturally she didn't know what else to do with them but bake for a full Sunday afternoon. Thinking these would be a nice Monday morning treat for one hundred of her closest friends, she piled them into grocery sacks and hauled them to school.

After several people reluctantly took the potatoes throughout the day (mostly out of awkward obligation) one girl briskly walked over and informed us that she had just found an article that explained that baked potatoes that have been wrapped in tin-foil and then cooled to room temperature have a frighteningly high probability of containing life-threatening Botulism. This was the first time in my life that I've ever heard an average consumer consider issuing a recall on baked potatoes.

Fortunately it seems I escaped unscathed--this is probably a result of being completely immune to absolutely every disease known to man (it's one of my New Year's resolutions). Either that or the gods don't have the heart to add face-paralyzing Botulism to my already severe cases of Tuberculosis, Ebola, Lohan (remember him?), Bacterial Meningitis, Tonsillitis, Pancreatitis, and the entire alphabet of the Hepatitisies. So it's either immunity or pity.

On a positive note: I have now gone seven weeks without taking either a sleeping pill or a Lortab. If I was in some kind of support group I would save that announcement for a really good time. Like when someone named Bob breaks down crying at one of our meetings because he made a level three Codeine shake the night before to wash down his last twelve Vicodin which makes Suzy scream out, "there's no hope for any of us! People can't change!" (I've clearly never been to any addict meeting of any kind--although I think I need to find one to help cure me of my incessant need of Mexican Food on a daily basis). But my hand is almost completely healed from the surgery and I'm finding natural ways to relax (in large part thanks to my flexibility class which is changing my life one day at a time).

Love you all.

~It Just Gets Stranger