The "Perfectly Good" Chair

My favorite memory of the weekend:
We are walking my brother back to his dorm after church this morning. We get to the door and sitting outside to the left of the door is an upside down chair. We all are commenting on the oddity of the situation. From what we could tell, it was a "perfectly good" chair. It didn't look broken. There wasn't any sign of the chair missing legs. Nothing appeared wrong other than the fact that it was outside and it was upside down. My mom, walks up to the "perfectly good chair" and flips it over so that only she can see the chair's seat. She immediately drops the chair back to its upside down position. "What's wrong?" I asked. My mom replies with a disgusted look on her face, "There is shit all over that chair."

Laughter ensues between me and my brother for the next 10 minutes. My mom spent those 10 minutes scrubbing her hands. I told my mom if she had taken the LSAT she would have seen the logical flaw in the situation. Who would put a "perfectly good" chair outside for no apparent reason? I think I might submit this scenario to the LSAC for consideration when they go to create future test questions.

The LSAT on me.

All in all it was quite a hilarious weekend. Well, as hilarious as a weekend can get that involves taking the LSAT. I basically didn't sleep at all on Friday night, partly because of my mom's snoring and partly because the thought "You're taking the freaking LSAT tomorrow." kept running through my head. Anyway, after a restless night, I awoke early, choked down some breakfast and headed to the W&L campus. I arrived, carrying my clear regulation ziploc bag filled with my most worldly posessions: waterbottle, #2 pencils, pencil sharpener, nature valley granola bar, tissues, tissues, and some extra tissues. I showed up to the building indicated on my admission ticket [I had scoped out the rooms the day before] and on the front door is a huge sign that says "LSAT relocated. Please head to the Science Building." GREAT! Where the heck is the Science Building? What if the rooms are horrible? Basically, I'm freaking out. After a momentary lapse, I spot a trail of other ziploc bag carrying people headed away from the building. I trailed them and found the new location. After going inside, I endured about 30 minutes of just sitting around waiting to be fingerprinted and registered. In the meantime, I easedropped on the girls sitting across from me. They both looked, well like inside people. You know, the ones who sit in the library with minimal socialization. [I realize this description also fits me, however the next detail will set us apart.] Their conversation really got juicy when they figured out that they both go to all women's colleges! This is when I tuned out. It was too much for me to handle. Finally they started letting people enter and divided us up into classrooms. My room wasn't too shabby. Everything was great other than the weird chairs that were oddly connected to the desk and swiveled on an arc. Throughout the teset I found myself drifting farther and farther away from the desk. Anyway, after the inital shock of "You may now begin." wore off, I began to appreciate the humor of the whole situation. I mean, honestly, we were all sitting there in that human torture chamber for about 6 hours. The only thing getting me through was this one guy, estimated age: 26, who kept trying to talk to this girl behind him during the breaks. She would give him that, 'are you really talking to me' look, and he never caught on. At one point he even told this joke that made me laugh out loud [obviously giving away the fact that I was blatently ease dropping]. The joke goes a little something like this:

One day a duck walks into a hardware store and askes the hardware store manager, "Hey, do you have any grapes?" And the hardware store guy says, "No we don't have any grapes! This is a hardware store." So the duck goes home. The next day the duck shows up again and asks the manager, "Do you have any grapes?" And the manager says, "No! This is a hardware store we don't have grapes. If you come in and ask me that one more time I'm going to nail your feet to the floor." So the duck goes home. The next day the duck comes back to the hardware store and asks the manager, "Do you have any nails?" The hardware store manager replies, "Nope, we just sold out about 5 mintues ago." The duck says, "Great. Do you have any grapes?"

Needless to say, I survived the LSAT.

Are you smiling at ME?

Today I was walking home from class and I had a moment where I felt all my faith in the world had been renewed. There was this person walking towards me with a huge grin on their face. I mean, they were smiling, AT me. Trust me, I did the glance from side to side to see if there was anyone else at whom this wide toothy grin could be aimed at, and no one else was there. I had no idea who this person was or why they decided to share their smile, but I thought to myself- how great.

Since I've been at UVA, I've always felt that there is specific "eye-contact" protocol that must be followed when coming upon someone walking your way. You have 2 options: 1) Avoid eye contact as much as humanly possible, but if a glance is necessary- try to time it so that you and the other person don't look at the same time OR 2) Look them square in the eye to intimdate them from the start so they feel the need to look away, which then leaves you free to look wherever you want, while the other person's view is limited to the sidewalk.

So anyway, back to Smilie. Just as I'm starting to feel that there are genuinely nice people still out there, the person slides a flyer into my hand as they passed me. Sly. Here I was thinking someone was smiling at me, and they were really just trying to lure me in so they could hand me a sheet with their stance on abortion. In hindsight this situation probably would not have even resulted if my initial stare had been more intimidating... time to brush up on my skills.

INTJ. hey.

What do I have in common with Hannibal, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Jefferson, JFK, and Woodrow Wilson?
EVERYTHING.

According to my public speaking book, entitled "Artful Persuasion: How to command attention, change minds, and influence people," my Myers-Briggs personality is in the running with this fine bunch. We are all introverted, intuitive, thinkers, and judgers. Personally I found it hilarious that good ole' TJ is an INTJ. And who knew that Myers and Briggs were mother and daughter? CRAZY. I wonder if they had very similar personality types, which in turn allowed them to spend a LOT of quality time together talking about personalities?

I bet my teacher would be quite excited if he found out these are the things I reflect about at 2:14 AM when sleep becomes tiresome.

Creatives must go insane.

Do you ever wish all your grades were determined by your mother? I know I do. Before I turn in this first ad assignment to my professor, I'm giving myself an A for effort...

Ugly Never Looked So Good.

So for some reason I signed up for public speaking this semester, and since the first day it has caused me an absurd amount of anxiety, which we then proceeded to have a whole lesson on. I think being so cognizant of every facet of public speaking anxiety has somehow uxacerbated the whole situation. Anyway, my next speech, that I will be delivering on Tuesday, is required to be in the commemorative genre. I'm still rather unsure of what exactly a "commemorative" speech is, but after much ado I decided to write mine on Betty Suarez. The infamous, "ugly" Betty. Now, keep in mind that choosing Betty as my topic was a painstakingly long, drawn-out process that didn't really end until I had tried out at least 3 other topics and finally reverted back to this idea. Anyway, after about 3-4 drafts I was actually feeling a lot better about the speech itself... that was until the following conversation with another guy in my class:

Me: Hey! So how's your speech coming?
Guy: Well, I haven't actually written it, but I did finally decide on a topic.
Me: Yeah, that took me awhile too. What did you pick?
Guy: I have this friend who has recently been battling cancer, so I'm going to write about him and his struggle. How about you?
Me: ... I'm doing mine on Ugly Betty.
Guy: Oh. [pause] That'll be good.


This scenerio somehow seems like a reoccuring theme in my life. I'm feeling more like Ugly Betty by the second.

When life gives you lemons. Watch Felicity.

For those of you who don't know, Felicity was a television show that was on the air from 1998-2002, and I've decided that it basically explains my life. I mean there's the obvious similarity: the hair. Its not often you find a frizzy haired character on TV these days now that we're in the era of the flat iron. This fact alone probably prompted me to buy all four seasons on DVD, a chronicle of her college years. Little did I know at the time the true value of this investment [If you are laughing at me right now/pitying my existence, I'm ok with that].

Anyway tonight, overtaken by nostalgia/feeling like a soggy noodle, I decided to turn again to my trusty friend. I of course had to start with the pilot episode when Felicity, in a moment of complete confidence, finally gets the courage to ask her long time crush, Ben, to sign her yearbook. It gets me everytime. Ben writes:

"Dear Felicity,
Here it goes. I've watched you for four years. Always wondered what you were like... what was going on in your mind all the time that you were so quiet, just thinking, drawing in your notebook. I should have just asked you, but I never asked you. So now, four years later, I don't even know you, but I admire you. Well, this makes me sound crazy, but I'm okay with that. So take care of yourself.
Love,
Ben
P.S. I would have said "keep in touch", but unfortunately we never were in touch."


After reading this, Felicity promptly changes her college plans of attending Stanford and follows Ben to NYU. Now, just for the sake of thought, I wonder how many people would ever actually do something like this. I know that whenever I am faced with an important decision there are always 2 choices: A) The practical, more logical choice or B) The choice that resonates with me (for reasons that I usually can't put into words). In these situations I am as predictable as a rock. I always choose A. Always. In this highly fictional/dramatized situation, Felicity, goes with B. While her choice was probably misguided, it represents something that I admire. [Yes, I did just say I admire a fictional character, but lets move past that.] She takes a chance. She ventures off from what she "should" do and does what she wants to do. This then brings up the question: Wouldn't it be nice to live your life as if you were a fictional character? I mean if I take a chance on life, will it be as kind as this nicely scripted drama? Probably not. However, if I were famous I would answer this question with a quotable quote saying, "There comes a time when you just have to decide to take off the training wheels and ride the bike."

So since I just made up my own quotable quote, I believe its time to put an end to this pointless circle of thought.

Brain Dump.

I for some reason can't form a coherent blog entry anymore because all of my thoughts seem fragmented and unrelated. So instead of conforming to some 'one theme wonder,' I guess I should just tell it like it is.

1. I feel fake most of the time.
2. I'm still fuming/laughing hysterically about the acapella auditions that were taking place in the room next door to where I was taking my LSAT diagnostic test last night. Not to mention, one of the songs was the Fugee's "Killing Me Softly," which ever since seeing the movie 'About a Boy,' I just can't take seriously.
3. I keep telling myself to drink less soda, but yet I continue to drink it, despite the fact that it causes me to think about 'how badly I have to go to the bathroom' during the whole second half of class rather than whatever important higher learning is going on in the meantime.
4. My women's weight training class is ridiculous. And I have no idea how to use the machines. The only reason I took the class is because I'm too embarassed to even enter the weight room when there are boys in there. I'm so seventh grade.
5. I recently started a book about a guy that interviews all these celebrities, mostly famous musicians, however I don't know who half of them are. But I feel like reading it makes me feel a little cooler. I now know a little something about Metallica.
6. Why the heck is everyone at UVA so intellectual? Why am I not?
7. I'm in a public speaking class, and I have this hope that it will turn me into an amazing crowd pleaser. As highly unlikely as this is, I'm going to continue to live in this fantasy.
8. I find myself looking down on people who can only talk about alcohol related things. I mean overall, who cares about what embarassing thing you did last night. Chances are, we've all done it too.
9. If I get another email telling me to submit my resume, I might scream.
10. Afternoon tea solves all problems.