To more Oranje pastures.

Total bummer. USA knocked out by Ghana. By the final 5 minutes of overtime, I was standing/pacing in front of the TV because sitting was too stressful. Defeat does indeed taste bitter. 

I'm not a fickle sports fan, but since my number two choice France flamed out immediately and the USA unfortunately succumbed to the gallant fight, I now throw my support behind (drumroll):

The Netherlands! (cymbal crash)

Besides the fact that their uniforms are objectively awesome, I also have some Dutch friends who would appreciate my moral support. U-S-A! U-S-A! Allez les bleus! Oranje!

Halftime report.

Ghana: 1 USA: 0. Eek.
My spirits are down during halftime, and I find myself really feeling the loss of my favorite French football eye candy. Since he is probably hiding in a hole somewhere along with the rest of his team, let us contemplate these images together and offer a moment of silence for Les Bleus and Yoann Gourcuff.

And now back to Rustenberg where Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger are sitting next to each other, cheering on the US from a luxury box. A surprisingly appropriate American delegation actually.

Elle Woods: A retrospective.

Sooo, I'm definitely sick. Even my eyeballs ache. Fortunately for me, today begins the knock out round of the World Cup, so I shall be entertained and have sudden bursts of adrenaline coursing through my veins all day long--or at least until 4:30 PM. Anyway, due to my baby sneeze disease I was unable to sleep and awoke ridiculously early this morning (5:15 AM) so I had a few hours to kill until Uruguay vs. South Korea. Decided to cruise On Demand and thought it delightfully appropriate that Legally Blonde was about to expire in only 3 days. I haven't seen it in a few years, and certainly not since I started the endless drudgery of LSAT studying and the whole law school application process. I remember liking it. Indeed I remember being entertained. Feeling the sting of Elle's rejection.  Rejoicing with Elle's triumphs. Not this time. My smile faded during the LSAT prep montage, when Elle begins chewing nervously on a pink feathered pencil. Things continued downhill and I felt my eye twitch when her sorority sisters time her Logic Games section with a bedazzled stopwatch while doing Pilates on the floor. Montage continues. On LSAT test day Elle stares quizzically into space, triumphantly grabs the answer out of the air a second later, and returns with vigor to her Scantron. Action skips over the agonizing month-long wait for results. Envelope arrives. Envelope is opened. Dramatic pause. "179!!!!!!!!" Confetti is thrown. Elle is lifted like the academic champion she is upon the shoulders of her Delta Nu sisters... 

"Oh fuck that!"

Yup, that's what I yelled at Reese Witherspoon. Then I promptly turned off the TV and put myself in time-out. 

It's not that I did poorly on the LSAT. I did well. But I worked my ass off to do well. I studied for MONTHS. I took it twice. I got blisters on my hands because I had to go back and erase all the previous months of work I did in my 17 TestMasters workbooks in order to do it all AGAIN. I had nightmares where I had to try to find the logical link between 4 totally nonsensically related sentences. A 40 second montage to sum up that hellish experience was apparently tantamount to a slap in the face at 5:45 in the morning. 

USA vs. Ghana game just started. Brain and emotions narrowed to tunnel vision focused on TV. Will return later. Over and out.

Occupational hazard.

Something traumatic happened to me a few days ago. A baby sneezed directly into my mouth. To recount:

I work for a couple who both happen to be alumnae of my beloved institute of undergraduate study. Offspring total 2 boys. One 10-month old. One 3-year old. The 3-year old has learned that he can use food as quite the power brokering tool and has restricted his list of allowable foodstuffs to: 1) chocolate chip muffins/pancakes/waffles/cookies 2) "white milk" 3) chicken nuggets, though permissible only in the shape of dinosaurs 4) M&M's. Despite this, he weighs about as much as his little brother because he generally only picks ONE of the listed choices as his nourishment for the day. The baby, on the other hand, is quite the gourmand and can pack in more pureed organic produce than Gwyneth Paltrow allots for a typical week. Anyway, I zoomed a spoonful of organic pumpkin and banana toward what I THOUGHT was a smiling mouth. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. Time pixelated into slow motion. I leaned in across the high chair and smiled a big, open-mouth grin too. And then...

Boom. Roasted. I'm no germaphobe, but I already feel the beginning trickles of post-nasal drip that will inevitably lead to a sore throat and general misery. There is also probably more big picture life metaphors that I could draw out of my involvement in this unfortunate event, but I'll leave such soul searching alone for now and just go to Wegman's to buy some tea and honey instead.

Legal advertising.

Depressing ad banner from bitterlawyer: PROM NIGHT DISASTER? Text LAW to 50500.

Preliminary legal research.

I decided to Google Image search "law student." THIS is the first image that appeared:

Behold the second:

Outlook for retaining ability to smile as a 1L does not look good.

Life lessons from cracked.com.

Also, this is pretty awesome. Lessons that should be learned before/after/during a combined $300,000 worth of education. Though I'm wary to enjoy reading something from a website called "cracked.com."