About Me

A year or so ago I sent my overseas cousin 101 things about myself to try and make her laugh. Most of them are still true, and most of them I would never post on the internet. But here's a selection of the more... suitable... ones.

10. I own a lot of jeans. A lot. I think I have an addiction to buying them. When I was in Africa, I was so mad at myself for having a jean addiction... such a waste of money. But when I got back, I still bought a lot of jeans... go figure.
11. I am the middle child, but like my cousin Molly, it would be more accurate to call me the “central child”… being the only girl definitely has some benefits.
14. I like comfy beds. I am an expert at making beds extra comfy… but only for myself. When I have to share they become less comfy because of the groove I make for my body… ask Nora, she’ll tell you all about how we both kept falling into the crater in my bed so that we practically had to spoon, even though my bed is huge. (I have moved on to SpaceFoam, which has eliminated the above problem).
16. My dog Riley is really cute but also pretty annoying. She almost died once when she was a little puppy, so I think now she feels like she has to make the most of life and she runs and plays all the time that she is not sleeping.
17. I am Catholic. I don’t really agree with a lot of what the Church says, but something about the rituals and the ancientness of mass is comforting to me, so for now I think it is the right religion for me.
19. My family used to have another dog; her name was Bandit. She was the best dog in the world, just ask my Dad. My brother wanted to get her stuffed; she was cremated instead. My brothers insisted that I name my dog either Bandit 2, or Re-run... I didn't, and as a punishment to me they called her Retard instead of Riley for almost a year.
24. I am pretty clumsy. I have the scars to prove it. Except the one scar on my cheek, that one is compliments of one of my brothers punching me in the face during a game of Marco Polo on the 4th of July when I was 12.
25. My parents were going to name me either Natalie or Adrienne. My Dad wouldn’t let me be Adrienne because of Rocky and my Mom didn’t want people calling me Nat because she didn’t want her daughter to sound like a bug. So they picked Margaret. Good story, huh?
35. There is a children’s book called Do Princesses Really Wear Hiking Boots? The answer is yes, I do.
41. I have really weird dreams. A lot. Some of my friends think I am crazy. My mom thinks that Stephen King probably has really weird dreams too. Mine are insane like Stephen King’s novels.
42. I have never actually read a Stephen King novel. I’ve just seen the movies. Usually I read books and don’t watch movies, but I don’t like Stephen King anyway.
43. I do like Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter. The books, not the movies. I read them when I was lonely in Africa, which was a lot.
48. When I was 13 and in Ireland I swam with a dolphin named Fungi or something like that. I had a panic attack in the water though - it was cold.
54. I was a bit of a tomboy growing up. I guess another consequence of having 4 brothers… I even carved my initials in the tree in the back yard, such a boy thing to do.
57. I like falling in love on the train. Well not really falling in love, but I like finding a cute guy on the train and do the whole eye contact thing. It’s fun mostly because you’ll never see each other again.
62. I broke a bunch of bones in my hand and wrist when I was in high school, now I have tendonitis and arthritis, which sucks. But my doctor is the best; he was on Oprah. I call him Dr. Nose Hair and I can’t actually remember his real name right now.
63. Mean nicknames are my weakness. I try not to be mean, but sometimes the nicknames are just so funny. There were a lot at Loyola… Barbie on Crack, Jon Benet, Running Chinese Boy…
70. My confirmation name was (is?) Anne. I choose it because of Anne of Green Gables, so much for the saints.
75. I like that book Where the Sidewalk Ends. That guy is really smart. Seriously.
81. I hate mayonnaise. The grossest thing on Earth. I don’t know if I have ever even tasted it, but the smell gives it away.
83. I have never smoked a cigarette in my whole life. I have a weakness for addictions, and really don’t need that one.
85. I used to joke that I wanted to be a philanthropist when I grew up. Marry rich and travel to remote places giving away someone else’s money all while wearing a Chanel suit.
88. My favorite flavor of ice cream is mint chocolate chip. The green kind.
93. If I only had a month to live the first thing that I would do is get married. Weddings are so much fun, especially ones with an open bar.
94. There are a lot of things I want to do before I die. I even have a list. But there are way more things than I could ever fit on a list.
95. I don’t like secrets. But I kinda have a bunch of them. I guess everybody does, even though there isn’t much to like about secrets.
96. I am pretty good at badminton. When I broke my arm, I learned to play left-handed, and was really good. I play with my right now, and am still good. It is a stupid game though, I wish I were good a better sport.
99. I miss our old beach house. It was slanted, but that was part of the fun. I miss having a beach house all together. I don’t miss having to sleep in the bed near the bathroom, but I would sleep there again if it meant we could get our beach house back.

Sitcom

One of my good friends recently told me that my life is significantly more like a sitcom than a "real life." The more I thought about it, the more I think she might be right. Crazy stuff happens in my life. Weird coincidences abound - the unusual has become usual. Just in the past week or so I can think of a bunch of examples. I went to a doctor's appointment in North Philly and while walking back to the subway station I randomly run into the "Meathead". I didn't have my glasses on, so I was definitely staring at him awkwardly long. I got hit on by an almost 40 year-old man with multiple children (remind me to add ex-wives and children to the dealbreaker list). On the bus, I sat behind a craaazy couple, the woman kept saying to the man "what are you going to do about it, hit me?" When they got up, she tapped me on the shoulder and said "He's too much of a pussy to hit me anyway." I just stared at her. I lost my shoe in the subway station, but some lady found it and gave it back to me. A guy I used to find attractive was wearing a leather driving (Mr. Huxtable-style) hat at the bar on Friday night. Then one of my friends decided to make fun of said hat. I laughed excessively, only before realizing the hat and it's wearer were standing right next to us and heard everything. (I am fully aware my soul is hell bound).

Then Saturday night a cute guy was talking to me at the bar, and the only person in the whole world that we both know just so happens to be the guy I was most recently hooking up with. Later that night, I went to an after-hours place with some friends but decided to leave before them. After weathering multiple crude comments being yelled from passersby, I finally got a cab which a random stranger decided to share with me. The stranger proceeded to ask me 2.3 million questions, then told me his entire life story including his recent decision to start seeing a psychiatrist, paid the entire cab fare and gave me his business card (which I promptly discarded in the first trashcan I passed.) I woke up this morning to a text message from one of my brothers, who presumably had not yet gone to bed from the night before, that said only "Morning Large Marge" and spent a few minutes wondering how I have any confidence at all having grown up with 4 brothers, then was exhausted from thinking and went back to sleep.

Interestingly, this past week has been one of the more normal weeks I've had recently... I guess I have become used to my life being sitcom-esque.

My Weekend

Reasons my weekend could have sucked:
1. I lost one of my favorite earrings at the bar.
2. My brother's ex-girlfriend told me that I would never do any better than my ex-boyfriend and that my brother would never do any better than her.
3. A few of my friends got arrested.
4. I went to a party filled with ugly guys.
5. I took the train to New York hungover and on two hour's sleep.
6. I finally got back to my apartment late Sunday with hours of work ahead of me.

Reasons my weekend really didn't suck at all:
1. I didn't cry about it this time.
2. My brother's ex-girlfriend, however, shed a tear or two when I ignored her and told everyone else to keep her away from me.
3. My friends were really wild and fun pre-arrest.
4. The ugly guys were funny as hell (except I am still not sure about the one who told me that if I were 6 inches shorter he would have been laying down some serious game... compliment or not? I'm not sure...)
5. I took the train to New York with my Mom to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit and it was amazing and I loved every second of it.
6. Instead of doing all of my work, I opted to sleep through my Monday morning classes.

Mystery Michael

My undergraduate college was pretty small and almost everyone's email address was their first initial followed by their last name @loyola.edu. People with common last names like mine would have a number after their last name. I, however, had no number - just the normal email address like everyone else. But poor Michael, we share a last name and he had the unfortunate luck of getting the email address with the number (although he's two years old than me, go figure). So of course, I have been getting emails for the past five years wrongly sent to me instead of Michael. Usually about once a month I get one and without fail every time I forward him the email, and he replies "Thanks again Margaret".

You really start to learn a lot about someone after 5 years of getting their emails. I know he played rugby, I know who his roommates were, I know he was a finance major, I know who his academic advisor was and the times of a couple of their appointments, I know his English Lit professor misplaced one of his papers, I know what bars his friends go to for happy hour, and I know that his ex-girlfriend got married this past summer. Last spring his friends planned a booze cruise, sent a bunch of emails out, and then one of them realized they accidentally invited "Margaret" instead of "Michael" before I had gotten a chance to check my email and forward them on to Michael who usually would then email everyone with the correct email address. Anyway, his friends were being funny, and this time they decided to take it upon themselves to invite me on the booze cruise also. Unfortunately, they all still live in Baltimore, so I couldn't make it (Not that I would have gone anyway). The following Monday I got an email from most of the guys on the list saying something along the lines of "Margaret, where were you?" or "We missed you on the cruise, Margaret." I responded to the whole list thanking them for their cordial invite and informing them of Michael's actual email address, and signed the email "Margaret". I have a bunch of friends that are their year of school, but I can almost guarantee that not a single one of them knows that my real name is Margaret. I wonder if I'll ever get to meet Michael - I do know that he goes by Mike, but if I have to be Margaret, he has to be Michael.

Here's to 2007

I don't think I have ever made New Year's Resolutions before, but if I were to start here's the ones I'd make for 2007:

1. No more late night binge eating (or catch that 'anorexia' thing that's going around).
2. Stop making up mean nicknames for people.
3. No more watching Extreme Makeover with my roommate to make ourselves feel better when we're a little depressed.
4. Actually start showing up to my job.
5. Think of a password other than "password".
6. Stop spending more money than I have in my bank account. (Sorry Mom!)
7. Find a support group for others like me who are addicted to buying jeans and Pumas.
8. Stop skipping so many AA meetings (kidding...)
9. Take myself less serisously - if that is at all possible.
10. Learn what "resolution" means.

Merry Christmas

Dear Philadelphia,

Merry Christmas!

Love,
Tony Romo and Terrell Owens

By the way, I love LJ Smith - mostly because his name is Little John, some because I've met him twice, some because he's from Rutgers, and the rest because he's a house. I love sports, and admittedly more so than most girls. I grew up with 4 brothers, a dad, and a mom who travelled a lot - So, if we weren't playing sports, we were watching them on tv. I love the Sixers in a hopeless and pathetic way. I was out of the country when the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl, stayed up all night waiting for the BBC ticker to show the results, and maybe shed a tear or two when I saw we lost. Even still, I am the first to admit that there is a line that girls shouldn't cross. I'll watch an Eagles game intently, but when the game is over, there's not a chance in hell I am going to listen to the post-game talk. I refuse to listen to any sports talk on the radio and have never sat through an entire Sports Center. Other than big news like A.I. got traded or McNabb tore his ACL, I barely even talk about sports outside of game-time. There is a line, and I respect it. Speculating about next season and keeping track of so-and-so's stats can be left to the men; it's not like the world has bigger problems to worry about or anything.

Tis The Season

I've been in the giving spirit recently and so I've decided to get some of my law professors and fellow students some Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever it is they celebrate presents:

To the girl who sat in front of me in Evidence: a how-to guide on Snood (she sucks)
To the Ichabod Crane look-alike: a Horse named Gunpowder
To my Land Use Professor: a tweed blazer and a puppy
To the guy I was accidentally really really mean to: a million dollars and a supermodel girlfriend
To Boobs: a less revealing shirt
To my Environmental Law Professor: those clippy-things that keep your shoelaces tied, preferably Sesame Street ones
To my roommate: a free night of making out with my brother and a typewriter
To Goog: a year's supply of Adderall
To my favorite cheater: my answers to every practice exam I have ever taken
To my male Crim Professor: a bra and a non-turtle neck shirt
To my Con Law Professor: a straightening iron
To the kid that sits next to me (in a class to remain nameless): breath mints, lots of them
To Dave: tickets to all the remaining Sixers games this season
To Windows 95: a copy of Windows XP
To my LRW TA: a cooler screenname
To my Professional Responsibility Professor: a megaphone and a copy of InStyle magazine
To Danny Tanner: a gold star and a pat on the back

And lastly to myself: a life

Bringing Sambas Back

I saw this dude wearing Sambas at Starbucks today. (His hair was also significantly over-gelled and he might have had a perm, but that’s a whole other story…) I used to rock those all the time in like 1993. I actually had 2 pairs - not gonna lie, I was pretty cool. My best friend (and she is still my best friend) had Umbros in every color imaginable; she was pretty cool too. That was right before the time that No Doubt was my favorite band and I got drunk for the first time in my life off manichevitz (zero clue how to spell that) in my friend’s basement. I was such a bad ass. I even got kicked out of Math class once for passing notes, which once confiscated my teacher read and in it I called him a creepy molester. He was my high school JV basketball coach later on down the road; I’ve had this bridge-burning thing down for a while. But seriously, I would go back to my Samba wearing days in a heartbeat, well as long as it meant I could trade in my law books for MAD magazines and hiding in the library for hiding my younger brothers’ Garbage Pail Kids cards from them.

Annoying

I have been trying to stay positive as much as possible, but my tonsils are infected again so I am allowed to complain a little… Anyway, here are a few things that have been getting on my nerves recently:

1. Vanity Plates – they are annoying and for assholes. Anyone who needs to put their profession on their license plate is incredibly insecure. And all other ones I have seen have all been dumb and seem like a giant waste of money.
2. Exams
3. Mr. Peanut – First, I don’t like peanuts. Second, Mr. Peanut is a big peanut who encourages people to eat much smaller peanuts – seems kinda cannibalistic to me.
4. Exams
5. People who put really long signatures on their personal emails. (i.e. Candidate for J.D, May 2008, Rutgers School of Law – Camden,… blah blah blah).
6. Exams
7. The Sixers – just lost four straight. Boooo
8. Exams – and my Land Use professor for making his closed book.

Hippies

I am not a hippie, as much as one of my friends likes to accuse me. That being said, I am taking a second environmental law class next semester - two in one year is really pushing the hippie limits. Even worse, I actually really like environmental law. (Who said that the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was mind-numbing anyway?... Just a dumb Supreme Court Justice probably). My Environmental Law exam is on Thursday, so I have been studying for it a lot, and I figured the best music to accompany environmental law studying is hippie music (I have a large collection).

As of 12/3/2006 at 10:49am, my 3 favorite songs are:

1. She Talks to Angels by The Black Crowes (not really such a "hippie" song, but I can't bump it from #1, not even during exam week - and Chris Robinson is a huge pot-smoking hippie anyway)
2. Rising Sun by Rusted Root
3. Can't Keep It In by Cat Stevens

Just in case you were wondering, I haven't gone all the way hippie. My clothes fit, I haven't bought anything hemp, I still hate soy products, and I shower daily. I don't really get the whole dirty thing anyway. I get that hippies are trying to be more in touch with nature or whatever, but I feel like most of them never leave the city anyway. Besides, being dirty really doesn't make you feel more connected to nature, trust me. I went hiking for over a month and showered 2 or 3 times total. I was the definition of dirty, but felt no more connected to my surroundings. I guess water conservation could be an excuse for not showering, BUT you can always just filter any fresh-water and bathe in that - in fact, I have an extra water filter around here somewhere I'd be more than willing to donate to the cause.

Ok, back to hugging trees...

Cultural Fable

Here is my favorite short story; it's by Brian Andreas -

"Cultural Fable"-
Once upon a time there was a pig who spoke eight languages & did sculpture with pieces of wood & rusted metal he found on his travels. One day he was out in the woods working on a new installation piece & he met a family from a small town in Tennessee. They had been walking for days. The dad saw the pig & said what are you doing, little piggie? They were all quite surprised when the pig said working with counterbalanced forces using found objects. They all stood around & looked at the piece for a long time. No one said anything. Finally, the dad shrugged & turned to the mom & said I don't know much about art but I know what I like & then they killed the pig & ate him.

Personally, I don't really like pork all that much, but I would have eaten this pig anyway.

"Tight with the Holy Spirit"

I am weird and apparently have some hidden religious fanaticism in me. One of my Environmental Law classmates and I were emailing about the upcoming exam, and at the end of his email he wrote something like "Send some prayers my way when the exam comes around." Completely normal. I respond to his email thinking that I am being equally as normal...then a couple days later I am going through my sent mail and I see the email I wrote; it ended with "I'll send some prayers your way... I am tight with the Holy Spirit like you wouldn't believe (Ok, that's a lie, but my Grandma totally is)"

UM, WHAT? I guess I was trying to be funny, but A) that's not really funny at all (and you'd have to know my Grandma, which he does not) and B) THAT IS SO WEIRD... I AM SO WEIRD. And the craziest part is, I thought I was being completely normal when I wrote it. I wish I could say I was drunk or something, but nope, I am a just out there.

Come to think of it, the Holy Spirit is kinda the left out member of the Trinity. You hear people all the time thanking God and Jesus... you never hear an athlete thanking the Holy Spirit. If you're gonna single out members of the Trinity, at least give them equal time. Maybe my subconscious was just giving the Holy Spirit his due. Or more likely, I am just crazy...for which I'd like to thank Jesus.

Cursed

Yes, I do realize that this is the third day in a row I have posted, which officially makes me a huge loser, but this is what staying at my parents' house for a few days does to me. If I am at my computer it looks like I am doing homework and no one bothers me... at least for a few minutes.

Anyway, I think I am cursed when it comes to rooting for sports teams. I know that every Philadelphia sports fan in the world feels the same way, but I am convinced that I have an extra-bad case. Seriously, if you really want a team to win, invite me over and convince me that I should root for the other team. It's a sure-fire recipe for a W. The Eagles should just call it a season and forfeit the rest of the games to avoid having anyone else get hurt. The Sixers were good just long enough to get my hopes up, only to have them disappoint me once again. I know it is early in the season, and while I still think we might make the playoffs, it'd only be to lose in the first round once again... But even with teams that I don't really care that much about, if I root for them they lose. Football and basketball have been on our tv constantly since I got home, and I don't think a single team that I wanted to win actually has - trust me, that's a lot of losses. For example, last weekend I went to watch the Ohio State/Michigan game with a Michigan alum friend of mine. So in support of him, I was cheering for Michigan to defeat THE Ohio State Univeristy (what is the The all about anyway?), which of course meant a win for the Buckeyes. Sorry Dave, but hey at least our speculation over whether or not the OSU student body can actually count to 42 is over...

Maybe my brothers are right - girls shouldn't be watching sports anyway.

Good Luck, Coach

Tomorrow my little brother starts his coaching career at Burlington City High School. If you are from the area, you are probably laughing already - it's not exactly in the best of neighborhoods. I, however, am willing to provide you with a few more reasons to laugh when thinking of my dear, dear brother coaching basketball. Don't get me wrong, he's an awesome athlete and was torn between playing hoops or soccer in college before ultimately choosing soccer. As a certified physical education teacher, according to the books, he is more than qualified for the position. But, to those of us that know him well, this is going to be hysterical. My brother is smart but irresponsible. For example, he is a driver's ed. teacher but doesn't really obey too many traffic laws. This summer he got his ankle replaced with cadavor parts, so couldn't work soccer camps as he planned -- So instead of trying to get a desk job, he convinced my parents to get a plasma tv and digital cable and sat home all day watching movies from one of the thousand movie channels. He spent his entire savings at the bar with his friends, which he hobbled to on his crutches (and after a few drinks would start to play air guitar on them all too often.) Needless to say, this lifestyle didn't bode well for his athletic figure, and as my mom said, "no one is going to hire a fat gym teacher." Just last night, I had to take his whistle away from him at the bar before I left in fear that it would get him kicked out (as it has before) with no one there to drive his ass home.

Some reasons "Coach" is going to be amusing:

• His white-boy ghetto talk is only going to get worse.
• He is already practicing the head in the hand, head shaking "no" in disappointment thing.
  
• I have no idea how he will ever make a Saturday morning practice - I don't think he has seen a Saturday morning since he was in high school himself.
• His happy-hour routine with the teachers is going to have to take a back seat for a few months... or he'll have to start scheduling post-happy-hour practices
• None of his players are going to find his Caddyshack/Zoolander/Any number of drunk college kid movies sense of humor very funny.
• They also won't find his die-hard-can't-lose-ever-even-if-it-means-giving-up-your-first-born, attitude very funny either.
• The kid loves his whistle waaay too much (power trip, maybe?)
  

Softball

This weekend my law school slow-pitch softball team lost in the championship game. Heartbreaking? Eh, not really. I was much more upset that I had to miss the Sixers game so my team would have enough girls to play. The Sixers beat the Heat (minus Shaq). Kyle Korver (my future husband) scored 22 points off the bench. I play catcher for my softball team. For those of you unfamiliar with slow-pitch softball, this position belongs to the worst person on the team. I caught a few foul balls and got on base once or twice on overthrown balls...a true "contributor" to my team's successes. So I'm no Kyle Korver - OK, not even a Shavlick Randolph, but that's not stopping me from getting a "RU Legal - 2006 Rutgers Law Softball Runners Up" tattoo on my other side of my rib cage with the corresponding scales of justice. (Yes, RU Legal is the very mature name of my softball team).

In completely unrelated news - the girl in front of me at the convenience store just bought rolling papers, three bars of chocolate and condoms... I am not kidding. Seems like she has a much more interesting night planned than my night of Environmental Law reading and T.V.

Happy Halloween

I have already gone out twice for Halloween - once as Cyndi Lauper and once as a speed skater, both were funny, neither were very attractive. I saw a lot of girls dressed as whores for Halloween though. Of course they said they were Victoria's Secret Angels, nurses, police officers, etc... but really they were being strippers. I live in a really gay neighborhood and gay guys LOVE Halloween. All of the costumes so far have been way over the top and most of them extremely inappropriate. I guess straight girls and gay guys have something in common - they like dressing like sluts for Halloween.

Tomorrow is a Holy Day of Obligation - All Saint's Day. I should go to church just for all the sins I have witnessed this past weekend, let alone the ones I committed myself. I probably won't go though... I'm actually hoping that one of my friends "kidnaps me and forces me to drink excessive amount of alcohol" so that at least I'll have an excuse.

By the way, does hell have a VIP section?

Marge Theretard

So my brothers are totally justified in calling me Marge Theretard. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a pretty intelligent person - I've always done well in school and on standardized tests. Dude, I was even runner-up in my elementary school's geography bee (let's not talk about the fact that I lost to a kid 2 years younger than me, ok?). But I also do really stupid things pretty often. For example just tonight when I was making dinner I got a fork stuck in the garbage disposal and it took me a good 30 or 40 seconds to figure out how to turn it off when I just turned it on and I have used it hundreds of times before. I can talk for hours about Middle Eastern politics, but I confuse Ice Cube and LL Cool J. I knew that Dave Henderson played for the San Francisco Giants for a season, but when playing a sports trivia game with my brothers, I was forced to be steady card reader after not knowing what "south paw" meant. I am the girl who would get a 100% on a Calculus test and then forget the combination to my locker. Most of the time my stupidity is innocent enough. On occassion, however, it rises to the level of being self-destructive... like getting wasted the weekend after getting out of the hosptial or hooking up with a guy with a live-in girlfriend. But in the end, the big things are few and far between and the small ones, well, they are funny and keep me human. So feel free to make fun, being able to take a joke is one of those things you learn when you have 4 brothers.

Mental Telepathy

If you know me at all, you know I enjoy a good challenge - I used to be satisfied with a mean game of Trivial Pursuit or The New York Times crossword puzzle, but as a single girl, "challenge" has taken on a whole new meaning. Never backing down from a dare, I have given out my screenname to potential suitors instead of my phone number (and a few not so smooth guys actually IMed me...). I have also played that game in the bar, where a friend picks out a guy and I have to get him to come talk to me without leaving my chair. I have conquered bar flirting - the challenge is gone. (OK, I know that sounds arrogant, but guys are easy. End of story). My roommate and I always talk about mental telepathy as a form of flirting - I call it the double black diamond of flirting, difficult to master and probably not even worth trying. But never backing down from a challenge, I decided to give it a try with a guy I see every day in the law library. I think it was really working, we progressed from no contact whatsoever to a nod in passing in the hallway to a quick smile from across the library. But then the weather got cold, and my mental telepathy experiment traded his cute flip flops in for WHITE SNEAKERS! Have I been sending out bad vibes? (I guess we'll know if he comes in tomorrow with a T.O. jersey and a visor...) So I guess the world will have to wait to see if I can handle the double black diamond because if mental telepathy really does work, this kid thinks I am a huge bitch.

Law School Goggles

My roommate's friend recently accused her of having law school goggles. She could have just as easily been talking to me. Maybe I have "I had a boyfriend for 5 years" goggles too; those in combination with the law school goggles, woah - I am talking the worst kind of tequila/jager/beer goggles ever. Not that all the law dawgs are ugly; there are a handful of good-looking ones. It's more just that most of them are not normal. But then again, since when is being normal all that much fun anyway?

In the last few months, I have met a bunch of law school and non- law school guys, 99.9% of them I immediately discount, and not just based on looks, I swear. For example, a couple of friends introduced me to this one guy - my impression "He's too nice. Poor kid, I'd ruin him". And about another "I have enough personality for three of him." And another "He'd never know what to do with me". Clearly, I am not so normal either.

Some of my friends think there is something wrong with me - that I am way too picky. There is probably some truth to that, in the past year or so I've met a really hot guy, a really smart one, a really rich one, a really funny one, a really athletic one, a really nice one... and so the list goes on, but I haven't met a really great one. A newer friend of mine recently told me that I'd be better off going for what's reasonable but still a good option - he obviously doesn't know me very well. I've had good and I've had reasonable, and I know that's never going to be good enough, not for me. You'll probably see me at the bars this weekend, laughing at some futile attempts to get my number/get me naked, etc... even though I am fairly certain that's not where I am going to find great. But hey, I'm young and with any luck great will find me.

Welcome to Africa

You know that dream where you go to school/work with no clothes on? One of my friends just called to tell me that she keeps having that dream over and over again. I've had it a few times and am convinced it prepared me for the real life equivalent. When I was living in Ghana, my host-father asked if I wanted to go to visit his mother in a remote part of the country with him. Considering the alternative was to hang out with the rest of his non-English speaking family, I obliged. It took us a little over 6 hours to travel the 100 miles to his mother's village. Her home was a traditional compound, an open courtyard between a few mud hut rooms and a primitive kitchen with no running water or electricity.

Within a few minutes of our arrival, I realized we were not just there to visit his mother but rather to attend the funeral of an old friend. I had no choice but to follow along. I was wearing a bright pink polo, a jean skirt, and flip flops which would not be appropriate for a funeral in America, let alone in Ghana where there is a specific traditional cloth for funerals. One of my host father's sisters, without speaking any English, tried to convince me I should borrow one of her dresses. Imagine my pale ass trying on this black and white tribal printed dress (it even came with a head wrap thing, which I refused to even try on). I obviously looked ridiculous, but might have been willing to just bite the bullet and wear the dress had it not been 5 sizes too big for me. This poor woman spent a good half hour trying to pin and tie the dress tighter but to no avail; despite my rather sizeable ass, I am scrawny compared to most Ghanaian women.

So off to the funeral I went in my pink polo and jean skirt. Funerals in Ghana are held outside usually in a blocked off street or courtyard. They are a huge deal - this one had around 200 people present. The extended family of the deceased sits in a large semi circle; upon arrival each group goes and shakes the hands of those sitting - around 50 at this one. After you shake their hands and express your condolences, you sit down, and each of those people gets up and comes to shake your hand, thanking you for coming. So here I am, white as can be in my pink polo, in a sea of dark dark Africans in what look like black and white togas. I can't speak the local language yet have to go shake all these people's hands. What I didn't know before hand was that more than half of the people at the funeral had never even met a white person before, ever. The one word of their language I did know was "Obruni" which means white person (literally it means Sunday - they equate white people with Christianity). People were pretty much shouting it at me - not at all in a mean way, just completely fascinated. The older people at the funeral would shake my hand for minutes laughing and talking to each other about me... no clue what they were saying.

I go through the whole line and finally get to sit down. Then I notice my following. No joke about 25 kids were surrounding me, following me everywhere I went. Some were running off shouting "obruni! obruni!" to get their friends to come out and see the white girl. As I sat there, some kids would sneak up and touch my skin or my hair - to see if it felt different, to check if I was real, who knows really. Most of them just stared at me watching my every move, in a way a marine biologist would analyze the behavior of a new species of sea turtle or something. Every once in a while a grown up would come shoo the kids away, but they would just come back within minutes in a larger quantities. After what felt like eternity but was likely only an hour or so, we finally got up to leave. The kids followed me to the car - touching me the whole way. As we drove off they were literally chasing after us- shouting "obruni!"; my host father who hadn’t said a word to me all day just laughed and said "Welcome to Africa.”