the ocean

Sub Sandwich

One of the things I've really enjoyed about my kickboxing classes over the past few years is the panoply of awkward substitute teachers. My experience of subs growing up was that they were generally credulous elderly people who just wanted to put in a video tape and be left alone. But this is different, as they actually have to do something. Very few people attend a kickboxing class to play hangman and lie about whether there was a homework assignment due.

My favorite is the emotionally needy sub, who constantly asks how she is doing. No one ever responds. (Note to fitness instructors generally: no one particularly wants to chat while they're doing squat thrusts.) Her pleas become more and more intense as the class proceeds until I fear there may be tears. Then there is "the chatty one:"

"Hey, guys. Happy Monday! Did everyone have a good weekend?"
(No response.)
"Well, I had a good weekend. Great weather, huh?"
(No response.)
"Okay, so are you guys ready to go hard here?"
(No response.)
"All right, well let's do it!"

And then there's the one who occasionally yells "freestyle" in the middle of class. I can assure you that I speak for everyone when I say that we have no idea what that means.

See, fitness is fun! Aside from the actual fitness part.

Pictures at an Exhibition

We went to see the Picasso exhibit at the Art Institute this weekend. We had waited a couple of months to go in hopes that it wouldn't be as crowded, but boy was that plan a bust. It was pretty much wall-to-wall people inside the gallery, which meant that mainly I saw the back of people's heads as they milled around and stood in front of the artwork. I'm actually thinking about doing my own series of paintings of people standing in front of paintings. Or in front of episodes of TV's Army Wives, I can't decide. They're all masterpieces in their own way.

Anyway, due to the crowding, I didn't have an especially fantastic time at the exhibit, but I did pick up some interesting tidbits, although typing the phrase "interesting tidbits" just made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Did you know, for instance, that Picasso painted the Blue Guitarist over the top of a few other paintings he had done? I mean, not like a painting of the Muppets fornicating or anything, but still, that's kind of weird. And then apparently there was originally a third person in the composition of his Mother & Child, but he literally cut the guy out and painted over his arm. I'm guessing they got into a fight on Facebook or something and Pablo got pissed. But all this information was obtained by x-raying the paintings, so I'm definitely going to take my Edward Hopper poster in to the ER to see if maybe there's a Monet water lilies under the surface or something. This could be my chance to get rich quick.

Explanations

I meant to blog Thursday night, but I may or may not have gotten buzzed off of a total of two (2) margaritas, come home, thrown two packs of gum on the floor, and drifted gently off into sleep. I'm not presenting this as interesting; I just thought I'd be honest about what really happened.

I was pretty tired because, as it turns out, Naperville is exhausting. Thanks to traffic, I had to leave an hour and a half to get there each day, which meant some pretty early mornings. And no matter how long I sleep, if I get up before seven, I'm pretty much useless. I had four Diet Cokes before noon and I was still speaking in sentence fragments.

The continuing legal education program was pretty good. There was a session with appellate court judges clowning on one another, which was fairly entertaining, sort of like a Real Housewives reunion show. They also did a program where the instructor showed clips of people's actual appellate arguments and made fun of them. Imagine if Joan Rivers were 35 and a human being. But two days is a lot of CLE; it's hard for me to imagine doing anything for two days straight without liquor being involved.

And thus we come full circle.

Happenings

Due to what I can only assume is a clerical error, I have somehow signed myself up to attend a training program in Naperville all day tomorrow. Starting at 8 AM. What are the chances that I'm going to totally love leaving my house at 6:30 to drive there? It is going to take a lot of Diet Coke and Kelly Clarkson to keep me awake for that drive. And then: who will I sit with at lunch? It's obviously very important to me that I be perceived as popular in the appellate advocacy world. Maybe I should pretend to be best friends with Clarence Thomas or something. We do have a mutual friend in Long Dong Silver.

In other news, ABC Family has begun making "original musicals" and they are ridiculous. The one that debuted Sunday night featured an unrecognizable Jane Seymour and more former Lifetime movie stars than you could shake a strong, proud female stick at. Also an extended song and dance sequence at an airport. Because I know that Homeland Security always makes me want to make some joyful noise.

Current Events

I have to say that this was a really bad week to have half of the internet blocked at your workplace. As events unfolded on Monday, I was dying to pop onto Facebook to make sure that my friends in Boston were okay (they were), but social networking sites are pretty much the antichrist to internet filters. And then on Friday, after waking up and discovering that the Internet had exploded from overnight coverage of a crazy dramatic standoff that seemed to have been directed by Jerry Bruckheimer, I really wanted to watch live coverage of the standoff, but any streaming media are of course strictly verboten. And so I had to force myself to concentrate on briefing juvenile sentencing issues, when all I wanted to do was gape at nothing in particular happening on cable television with everyone else.

I did get my wish, of course, when I got home, and it was, of course, disappointing. Given all of the reporting of half-truths and outright misconceptions this week, I'm still not sure that I understand all the facts of what actually happened this week. (I think a dark-skinned Saudi Arabian set a fire at the Kennedy Library while robbing a 7-11, but that could be wrong.) And the big thing that everyone wants to understand -- the why -- is the one thing that we may perhaps never fully know. But it was kind of fun to watch anchors contradict and talk over one another as they tried to balance the various bits of non information they were receiving. Television at its finest.

Elevating the Level of Discourse Since 2013

For those of you who didn't have to make small talk with coworkers today, just a heads up that there was a lot of rain this morning. Streets flooded, people got cranky, and apparently there was some sort of poop geyser up on the north side. And I got jammed into a red line car with eighty of my closest friends. Which was when some lady decided to provoke the crazy homeless person on board by insisting that she be allowed to sit down next to him, leading to a torrent of profanities. I'll try to reproduce the dialogue below, but replace the naughty words with nice words that start with the same letter.

"You friendly cookie, why you got to fudgesickle crowd me? Get the fondue out of here, Beyoncé!"

"I'm just trying to sit down, sir. Everybody got to sit down sometimes."

"You stupid nougat pussycat! I don't need you in my french fried business. Go to fantastic hot dog."

"God bless you, sir. God loves you and so do I."

"I don't love your great doggie pussycat! I oughta kick your funtimes Arby's."

"Oh, go ahead, sir. I'd love to see it."

"I would, but there's too many fantastic witnesses. You ain't worth it."

"Uh huh. All talk. You're all talk."

"Freedom you, banana."

It continued on like this for some time. Really, my biggest regret is that David Mamet wasn't there to take it all down.

True Confession

I bought a can of white frosting at the grocery store this weekend, despite the fact that I have nothing to frost, and have slowly been eating it with a spoon. I can't even pretend this is some kind of low point for me; "white" is perhaps the most amazing flavor of all and I will probably do this again.

Sometimes we just have to accept who we are and what we've become.

Lifelong Learner

I went to a continuing legal education program called "The Happy Lawyer" at my office this week. I thought that perhaps they had located the only happy lawyer in America and caged him to put on display, but it turned out that they just wanted to let us know about services that are available for unhappy lawyers, or lawyers who may be happy but only feel that way due to the assistance of too many substances. (Thus, I do feel the title was somewhat misleading, and am drafting a class action complaint against the organizers as we speak.) Apparently, there's a confidential hotline we can call to get advice or counseling or even set up an intervention. I have a feeling that they get mad at you if you set one up for an addiction to say, Dance Moms, however.

I actually went to a similar program while I was still working at a big firm, but that one turned into a free for all group therapy session, with everyone confessing their secret hopes, fears, and desires. I learned which of my coworkers woke up in the middle of the night screaming and which felt that they had perhaps been touched in questionable ways by their high school wrestling coaches. Any many people of course just complained about the fact that they actually seemed to be expected to show up at the office to collect their six-figure salaries, which I'm sure warmed the hearts of the volunteer therapists that ran the program. Lunch was provided at that program, though, so it started out way ahead of most.

Anyway, it is an important issue, since I can tell you from experienced that a lot of lawyers need a lot of professional help. And I got an hour and a half of ethics credit for attending, so I really can't complain, although lord knows I do try.

Back At It

It has not been easy to make the transition back to work mode from vacation mode. I keep wanting to spend all day gawking at things and instagramming. Sitting at a desk all day and reading about crimes people committed ten years ago is somehow less thrilling. And it's weird how nothing has really changed. The conversations I'm overhearing about everybody's child care and what's going on on The Voice are pretty much the same as they were before I left. Although there are some new hairstyles around the office -- combovers are going to be big this Spring!

And did you know we have to pay taxes again this year? I guess it's like an every year kind of thing. Fortunately, I have a seasoned tax preparer, who asks me things like "did you need all this paperwork for anything" and "were you planning on, like, taking deductions and stuff?" Good hands, people, good hands.

I'm already thinking about where the next vacation should be, although it will be a while before I have enough vacation days and cash on hand to take it. Definitely somewhere warmer and closer next time. Turns out I'm still pretty terrible at sleeping on a plane, although I am pretty great at watching in-flight movies I didn't even want to see when they originally came out.

Vienna in Pictures, Part V

Okay, this is it, I think. I actually took a couple hundred pictures and I'm only sharing 25, so feel lucky. Maybe I'll have slides made and hold people hostage watching them in my home.


This is the interior of the Austrian Supreme Court. That's lady justice at the top; she's more of a badass than I'd imagined.


Um, dessert. They have a lot of it, and it is amazing. I'd kind of like to live in this display case.


This is the rotunda of the Kunsthistorichemuseum. Try saying that five times fast. Actually, don't, because it's kind of a waste of time.


My role model in all things.


This is the lobby of the modern art museum. I liked the lobby a lot better than a lot of the art.

Vienna in Pictures, Part IV

We're closing in on it, I swear. Can I help what an amazing photographic artist I am? I'm like the Ansel Adams of vacations, right?

This is a monument to a plague. Or to the people who died in that plague, probably. Plagues themselves aren't intensely popular. Kind of like Nicole Kidman.

This is the inside of the Opera House. Our tour guide was obsessed with making everyone guess how much things cost there. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I hadn't really figured out the exchange rate yet.

This was an awesome photography exhibit at the Albertina. As an established photographer myself, I like to help people who are just starting out. I think this guy could have a future. Although he might actually be dead, I think.

They've got so many famous old paintings at the Kunsthistorischemuseum they have to just kind of stack them up. I offered to take some off their hands, but they just threatened to arrest me.

This lady's kind of just hanging out on the side of this building. And this building is like a 7-11 or something. They got class just coming out of their asses.

This is the Jesuitenkirche. It's kind of over the top how gorgeous it is, frankly. Almost offensive. If you look really closely you can see another person taking a picture at the bottom of my picture.

This is the dome of the Peterskirche, which was right across the street from our hotel. It depicts a bunch of angels, like, hanging out and stuff. I'm pretty sure some of them are watching Hoarders.


This is the Karlskirche. Mainly I just remember that it was snowing horizontally the first time we were there. Directly into my face. It's bad when you feel the weather is targeting you personally.


This is the roof of the Stephansdom, which depicts the double-headed eagle, which is a symbol of Austria, I think. Or maybe one of the emperors kept a double-headed eagle as a pet, I don't know. I didn't really pay that much attention in German class.


This is the Belvedere, not to be confused with Mr. Belvedere, who was nowhere in sight. It's another palace, which they've basically turned into an art museum. They've got so many palaces lying around that they're  turning them into gas stations and warehouses now. And yet they refused to give me one of my own, which is frankly just rude.

So they have like a million palaces there. This is Schonbrunn (there should be an umlaut on that "o," but I can't find it, or at least haven't tried). It's nice enough and all, though if it were me I would definitely add a hot tub and a trampoline room.

Schonbrunn has its own Roman ruin. Don't you? I actually don't know if they got real ruin parts and put them together or if it was just fabricated for them by Nate Berkus, but it's there.

Schonbrunn also has something called a gloriana. It's like a gazebo on steroids. And it is up on the hill behind the palace, which is a lot taller than it looks. Sometimes people hilariously wipe out in the snow while climbing up there, too. Just saying.

Apparently, it is still the nineties in Vienna. And no, we didn't buy our souvenirs there. We don't really trust the instincts of the woman who made Sphere.

They also have their own version of Top Model. Well, Germany's own version. It stars Heidi Klum as the Tyra figure. It was entirely in German with no subtitles, and yet we were transfixed.

Here you can see the cathedral, known as the Stephansdom. They light it up with psychedelic colors at night, or maybe someone just secretly drugged me every night. We climbed to the top of the tower, passing dozens of people who had stalled out along the way. I want to teach an aerobics class in Vienna that just involves climbing the Stephansdom. Oh, and this is my moot court team, by the way. Don't they look super lawyerly? 

They had an  Easter market where they sold fun Easter decorations, toys, candy, and, most importantly, giant chocolate-covered pretzels. Actually, they had several Easter markets. Easter is huge there, like bigger than Jesus. Can you see that it's snowing in this picture? It did that a lot, as my ruined shoes can attest.

They sold tiny beers at this place. Either that, or we grew into giants when we walked through the door. Only science can really tell us the answer, frankly.

This place was very authentic and local and they hated us like a bad smell. "Why are there Americans in here talking about moot court in English?" they seemed to be wondering. These colors don't run, bitches.

They have this giant Ferris wheel that they're very proud of, although of course they don't call it that, but something in German instead. We walked like two miles through the snow to get there, largely because we hadn't bothered to figure out the trains yet. There wasn't much of a line to get on, though, probably due to the driving snow.

Here's the inside of our car on the Ferris wheel, where you can see me sitting very still trying not to make it rock. I had a bit of anxiety on this trip, particularly when someone decided to open the windows while we were at the very top. Not sure why I thought I might inadvertently jump up and throw myself out of a window, but it was a big concern at the time.

More to come...