FDA Approves Cure for Crankiness: Dilly Bars

Okay, I'm turning a corner. After a week or so of feeling sick, cranky and just generally "blah," I think I'm starting to feel better. I attribute this to a few factors. Two random acts of kindness toward me today: Misti bought me a dilly bar (YES!) and also a classmate discretely handed me a coughdrop when I was hacking up a lung during Con Law this morning. Also, I'm wearing a smashing pair of dangly earrings today that I bought at a teeny-bopper store in the mall last week when Sarah was here, and I'm wearing a suit and my shiny new shoes and did my hair up kinda fancy. I do this thing where if I need to psych myself up for a test or if I feel like crap, I dress up. It actually works!

So I've been working on putting together this fabulous presentation for our Amnesty International chapter, which was supposed to be today. Had the Lead Defense counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda coming to speak in the atrium of the school (I've mentioned this a couple of times, I know, I was super excited). We had the stage and podium set up, tables, refreshments, etc. Well, I got a call from his assistant last night at around 6 p.m. and learned that he's still in Africa and had to cancel! Ugh! I had a pow-wow with my co-chairs and we tried to find a replacement (at such short notice, yikes) and then decided to cancel the whole event. It turned out to be not so bad. We ended up having to buy 40 cookies and bars from the caterers but otherwise were not charged for anything else. Since we're having a meeting tomorrow and don't have enough funding to buy lunch, I guess we'll just eat cookies instead and get all sugared up & be bouncing off the walls.

Shad invited me to be his date at two gallery openings this weekend. (I'm so lucky!) Friday is a show in St. Paul, Saturday is Ox-Op. I might also go to a benefit for Indonesian tsunami victims on Sunday night, put together by the local Indonesian community (we were invited by some of the Indonesian clients in our office), Greg and I had been talking about going but I was practicing saying "NO" to things today, so I said I didn't want to go but now I'm having second thoughts. I'm so pathetic, so bad at this "no" thing. Nancy Reagan=not proud. Aside from those things, I plan to hide out in the library for the weekend writing a pre-trial motion that's due next Thursday--it's a big chunk of my grade, so I suppose I should get started on it. I've been sitting on it for over a week already.

Two weeks 'til Spring Break!!!

Okay, I know this entry is getting long, but I have a few current events to comment on. So if you're already sick of hearing blather on about my life, you can stop now and don't torture yourself any futher. But if you're still reading, here's what I've got:

1. Smarty Jones' jockey was arrested by US immigration officials (He's a Canadian citizen). He had a felony conviction four years ago, which makes him deportable according to federal immigration law. Sounds like he's currently out on bail with removal hearing pending. Actually I don't really care, I just think it's interesting. I don't know exactly what he was arrested for--assault? I know we don't really want stabbers (or whatever he did) in our society. But these same laws (IIRIRA--which sadly was passed during Clinton's presidency) have also been used to deport people who've written bad checks or driven without a license. Do we really want to tear families apart over stuff like that? Oopsy-doopsy, ranting...

2. This kid's grandparents found a fictional story in his private journal about zombies overtaking a high school. They turned the story in and now he's being held on $5000 bail & charged with making terroristic threats. Are you kidding me? This country is so unbelievably caught up in a culture of fear. Lord help us all. I was thinking taht it must have been pretty crazy to live in the US during the 1910s-1920s...Can you imagine what it would have been like to be alive during prohibition? Talk about the highjacking of moral values by the red states. Yikes. Not to mention the white knights were in full force at that time, etc. I digress...

3. Supreme court ruled 5-4 that we can't execute juveniles. It was a super long opinion--read it here. Certainly a step in the right direction...I hope that in our lifetime we'll see our country adhere to the standards of decency in the rest of the world and abolish the death penalty altogether.