After one of our sets yesterday a middle-aged guy came up to me and struck up the following conversation.

Guy: I have a question for you.
Me: Okay, sure.
Guy: Do those outfits you’re wearing have built-in bras?
Me: Uh, no.
Guy: Because my wife and I were trying to figure it out, and then you bent over and we were like, nope, guess not.

I’m having a strange problem. Not a problem of much consequence, and it probably will be* resolved by the time I finish writing this post, but a strange one nonetheless.

I have two Twitter accounts: my personal one (@Prepoceros) and the one I run for taiko (@KaminariTaiko). I post to the personal account at least once a day and the taiko account only a few times a month, so I usually stay signed in to @Prepoceros whenever my computer’s on.

A few minutes ago I tried to sign out of @Prepoceros so I could sign in to @KaminariTaiko and tweet about our appearance at the New Orleans Japan Fest** this weekend. But Twitter won’t let me sign out. I’ve clicked “Sign Out” at least a dozen times, and every time it brings me back to my homepage, still logged in.

I closed and reopened the tab. No dice. I even tried logging out of Gmail—I didn’t think it would work, but goodness knows what all Google secretly runs these days.

So that’s the problem. I’m signed in to Twitter, and I CAN’T SIGN OUT. *cue creepy music*

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* I originally wrote “will probably be,” but I changed it after a rereading. I’ve never thought that rule made much sense, but in this case, it totally does. When I finish the post, the problem either will or won’t be solved; it won’t probably be solved.

I still usually prefer the sound of the “wrong” way to write those auxiliary-plus-adverb things, so this isn’t the kind of revelation that’s going to change my life. I’m sure I’ve broken the rule five other places in this post alone. Living on the edge, that’s what I do.

** Squee! It’s gonna be awesome, except for the early-morning departure tomorrow and the very-early-morning return Monday. Here’s hoping the bus makes it there in one piece. Remember my “Houston to Tupelo” video, with the four blown tires? That was last year’s New Orleans trip.

I’m taking Professional Responsibility this semester. It’s a required class that covers the rules of ethics regarding lawyers in preparation for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, which everyone has to pass in order to be admitted to the bar.

As in all law school classes, most of the cases and hypos we discuss fall right on the boundaries between rules, where the decisions are most difficult. It’s hard for me to say how often ethical dilemmas like these come up in practice, but for some of these, once in a career is enough to destroy a person.

(more…)

I was in the middle of writing a post about some of the icky ethical dilemmas posed in my Professional Responsibility class, but now I’m home, and my book’s in the car, so I think I’ll finish that one later.

Instead, I’ll (again) share something I dreamed last night. Dull, I know, but hey, no one’s forcing you to read it.

I was walking through a super fancy store in a mall when I spotted a designer “dress” on a display stand. I put “dress” in quotation marks because it was really a big circle of wood with a clock face painted on it, held up by a chain of paperclips. The back had a smaller wooden circle just big enough to cover my butt.

I tried it on naked (shocking a few small children in the process) and fell in love with it. It cost a thousand dollars, but I knew I had to have it. What a fashion-forward figure I’d cut, walking around town in my fancy clock-dress! I figured I might as well wear something under it, so I picked out a little blue dress* to go with it.

The sales lady tried to convince me that I’d also picked out a pair of purple sequined flip-flops for $9000, but I knew that couldn’t be true because I was boycotting everything sparkly, and anyway, could we please hurry this up? The waiting around was aggravating my dad’s cancer.

The End.

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* Even now that I’m awake, I still love this imaginary blue dress. If I can find fabric like I dreamed of, I’m totally going to make it.

… and it’s only Day 3. Welcome to NaBlo, folks!

I’m going to fall back on what will likely be my default blog topic, which is to tell you about a segment of my dreams from the previous night. I’ll warn you that this one is slightly unpleasant.

I was about eighteen and still living with my parents. I went up to my room and found either a rat or a snake, I don’t remember. Deciding to keep it as a pet, I put it in a box I had lying around, only to discover that my hamster Stripey, who (I thought) had died and been buried in the backyard when I was ten, had actually survived and was living in that box. I threw the rat-snake in there, too. Why not, right?

They did okay for a while until I went on vacation and forgot about them. When I got back I wondered whether I should open the box. Maybe my wee pets had survived on whatever magical food source had sustained the hamster for eight years. On second thought, I realized that if they had died, then one of them had probably died first, which meant the other would have eaten it.* I decided not to open the box.

The End.

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* This actually happened with two mice our ninth grade biology teacher left at school over winter break with no food. I was so angry. And disgusted. But mostly angry.

November will be a busy month.

To start with (of course I have my priorities in order), we have four taiko performances in November. The Woodlands, College Station, New Orleans, and Alexandria, LA. For the non-Houstonians, I’ll note that The Woodlands is the only one of those in the Houston area, and even that’s fudging a little. We’ll be spending a lot of time on the bus, is what I’m saying. The aging, decrepit bus. I hope it holds up. If it doesn’t … well, I hope it holds up.

We usually have our intensive practices on Sundays, but now that we’ll be performing every weekend, we’ll have to spend more weeknights practicing. Practice-show-practice-show-practice-show. It would be a bit stressful if I didn’t love it so much. Instead it’s exhilarating. Plus who doesn’t love road trips? Every trip, I’m reminded of how much taiko is like quiz bowl or math club. My friends are just a different kind of weird than they used to be, that’s all.

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It’s that time of year again. Bet you thought I’d forget this time, didn’t you. Oh no, I remembered. Thirty days, thirty posts of dubitable quality. Starting now.

The ending of Daylight Savings Time, it is nice, yes? I’m pretty sure DST was invented by morning people. Morning persons? In law school there is no “people.” There is only “persons.” This kind of precision in the use of language is probably my favorite thing about law school. That and the Fridays off.

Anyway, the morning folks. I don’t dislike them, exactly, but I think they and I must be members of different species. I’m jealous of their ability to bounce out of bed at 6 AM, shower, eat, and skip out the door to begin their productive days. There is no bouncing when I wake up, no matter how long I’ve slept. I do my best work in the late afternoon. During the late morning and early afternoon I feel an overwhelming urge to nap. I wish more schools and workplaces made napping easy, or even possible. We non-morning folks would be healthier and better workers, I think.

See, you can’t set the bar for NaBlo post-quality too high on the first day. Low expectations, my friends, low expectations.