The Waiting Game

It’s been just over a month since my most recent sitting for the bar exam and I have a little under a month left to wait for results. Before I took the exam, I blogged about my life plans for afterward and since I have nothing else to talk about, I figured I’d give an update on that.

1. I have read two books from my ALA Midwinter pile. Wink, Poppy, Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke and What the Dead Want by Norah Olson. One was good, the other not so much. At the moment, I’m reading books on my 2016 TBR Manners and Mutiny by Gail Carriger (audiobook) and Leave Your Mark by Aliza Licht (hardcover). I had been reading A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab on my iPad at the gym, but I haven’t been to the gym since Jan 23rd.

2. Quite possibly my most successful task on the list. Not every night do I get to come home, walk my dog, take off my bindings and call it a day. Some days I have to apply for jobs or work on stuff for Phi Alpha Delta or I pace. But there are some days where I do come home, walk my dog, take off my bindings and pass out for a much needed nap or watch hours of things on Netflix I’ve likely already seen and can completely zone out to. Those are the days…

3. There haven’t been any Federal holidays for me to day drink during, but I have not seen the inside of a library in a month. I am overdue for a trip to pick up some books (and maybe return some overdue ones).

4. I’m only caught up on some of my bookish podcasts (Books on the Night Stand, Get Booked, All the Books, and Dear Book Nerd). I also started listening to The Truth, which is a storytelling podcast a lá old school radio shows. It’s odd, but I like it. And the job search never ends. It’s also not showing a lot of prospects, but I can’t go down that hole right now.

5. I am eating less. My slim bank account appreciates this.

6. The nag, nag, nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be doing anything else but studying lingers. It’s lost some potency, but it’s still there. I reckon it will be until I pass.

7. I’m only caught up on Sleepy Hollow because reasons (black girl lead, white male opposite, all the feels). I’m having a difficult time getting back into regular tv. I’ve been watching it so sporadically for so long now, I have no idea what’s going on with what and when things air or where to watch them most of the time. Also, I don’t want to get drawn in and then have to stop because of bad reasons I won’t say in an attempt to not jinx myself. And CBS is the worst! They don’t play well with others (Amazon Prime, Hulu, & Netflix) and I refuse to pay for a streaming service for network TV, so I miss out on Criminal Minds, which is another show I can watch over and over all of the time. I did spend one Saturday on my couch zoning out to almost all of the Police Academy films. They should reboot that series.

8. I have not decluttered a thing. That Saturday where I couch surfed Police Academy I kept saying to myself, “you could multitask and clean out a closet while you watch this.” I couldn’t talk myself into it.

9. My bar books are picking up dust on the floor and in a corner where I can’t see them. I have not gotten that massage yet, though. I need to jump on that, but since I spend the weekends not wanting to leave my apartment this is difficult. As my friend so aptly stated, I’m an anxious hermit right now.

10. The jury is still out on this one as I wait for my letter. I dare say, my gut says I passed and I won’t be doing this again in July. My brain is cautiously optimistic and prepared for that possibility that I won’t say.

Until next time when maybe I have something interesting to say…

~NV~

Last Post Before the Bar Exam

The next time you hear from me, the bar exam will be over and I will have relocated to my couch for some quality time with Netflix, vodka, and my fur baby. Still pants-less.

Ostensibly, I can get back to “real life.” Whatever that means because suffering the bar exam seems pretty damn real to me. I have some ambitious plans for #postbarexamlife, but realistically I know I’ll probably be a zombie for weeks. When I re-emerge from brain hibernation, I look forward to a few things…

1. Putting a dent in this massive stack of books I picked up at ALA Midwinter, not to mention my already overloaded On-Deck reading list & my 2016 TBR list that was supposed to stay at twenty-four books.

2. Coming home from work, walking my dog, taking off my pants, and calling it a day. Instead of dashing home, walking my dog, stuffing my face with Ramen, and booking it to the library to get only 3 hours of studying every night.

3. Day drinking on Federal holidays instead of sitting in the library.

4. Dedicating the time I spent in transit to flashcards back to podcasts and job searching for permanent, full time law work.

5. Not constantly having to stuff my face because my body needs an excess amount of fuel to run like the machine it has been for these many weeks.

6. The nag, nag, nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be doing anything else (no eating, no sleeping, no fun, no changes, no people, etc.) but studying going away.

7. American Horror Story Hotel, The Blacklist, Criminal Minds, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Elementary, The Good Wife, Gotham, The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, Once Upon a Time, Ripper Street, Sleepy Hollow; and practically every film released since October 2015.

8. Tackling my 2016 goal to declutter and simplify my apartment.

9. No longer carrying around the heavy load that is bar prep books. I need the longest and deepest of the deep tissue massages between my shoulder blades.

10. That I passed and I won’t be doing this again in July.

~NV~

 

Review: Dear Killer

I figured out how to get Goodreads to draft post to WordPress, so excited!

Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is the unedited review that I wrote for a blog that didn’t like my review and asked me to edit it.

I don’t want to give it any stars.

I did not like this book, which was a disappointment considering I had it on my TBR before I was offered a chance to review it. The more I read, the more absurd it turned out to be. I struggled to get through the text because there were so many, many things about this story that drove me to the bad kind of crazy. I wish I hadn’t wasted time reading it.

“…sinister psychological thriller that explores the thin line between good and evil, and the messiness of that inevitable moment when life contradicts everything you believe.” (via Goodreads)

In reading the description, I thought, “yes, depraved heart murder!” A book about a serial killer committed to killing, and how taboo for it to be a teenage girl! In reading the text, I felt more like I was living in a parallel world of the TV adaptation to Gossip Girl if Blair were a murderess and kept a diary.

Kit has a self-possessed sense of maturity, that only exists in her head. She has this pseudo-romance-toy-fling with Alex, the detective on the case of the “Perfect Killer,” that is both creepy and ludicrous. I could not suspend my belief enough to keep from laughing when Alex calls upon our seventeen year-old, self-proclaimed moral nihilist for advice on how to view a crime scene; or how she manages to take down a trained detective, an adult male, in fisticuffs. Every person she comes into contact with is beneath her, most evident in the atrocious way she expresses pity and hatred toward her mother.

Yet again, an English setting lacking Englishness. If the Thames wasn’t mentioned every time Kit was outdoors, I would’ve forgotten this book was set in London. My advice to this American author who wrote the book when she was seventeen is to write what you know.

The last thing I’ll bother to comment on is what almost made me throw my iPad. Kit describes almost everything in boring, unimaginative detail. Weather, shopping, her appearance, washing her hands, the names of the London neighborhoods she walks through. We get finite details of the other murders she commits. Every split decision she makes, each reaction of the intended victim, always reminded that she is supreme in the world; but when the murder we’ve all been waiting for happens, she does a fade-to-black. Unforgivable.

I did not like this book, I wouldn’t even give it any stars if I had it my way.

View all my reviews

Boredom Leads to Books

I was looking for a challenge to attempt to commit to because, frankly, I’m bored. So I’m now doing three book challenges. Admittedly, I was only willing to go so far out of my comfort zone and extreme chess was next on the list.

Book Challenge One: Goodreads 2014 Reading Challenge is an annual challenge that I’ve been doing for the last 3 years. Last year I started with a challenge of 30 books and ended up increasing it to 40 because I surpassed my goal a little more than halfway through the year, ending 2013 having read 45 books. This year I challenged myself to 50, but I’m doubting I will make it with the bar exam smack in the middle of the summer and all that entails. In addition, I won’t be jetting off to a country where I can’t drive and have time to read books upon books upon books on public transportation. Unless I can pull off my diabolical post-bar exam plans. This challenge encompasses any book I read and Goodreads keeps track of it for me.

Book Challenge Two: The Book Vixen Read Your Freebies 2014 Reading Challenge is exactly how it reads – a challenge to read the free books I have acquired. It’s a third generation challenge, passed down from blogger to blogger. The gist is to read at least 12 legally obtained, non-ARC, free books, in any format. I’ve found that a lot of books are free for a reason, and you get what you pay for (or don’t in this case). I won’t be surprised if I do a lot of flouncing, but it will force me to read the free books I get instead of just collecting them. I have 104 options to choose from right now, mostly in my Kindle app. I’ll be utilizing the random number app to help me choose which ones to read.

Book Challenge Three: Fic Fare 2014 “Real” Book Challenge. Fic Fare is a book blog run by some people I kind of know from a different era in my life, but we’re still in touch and I like their book rec’ing skills. I’m aiming for 11-20 books that would land me in the “Real Book Enthusiast” category. I’ve already gone ahead and picked the first 11, which is the minimum I can read to reach my goal. I figure this leaves room to fill in anything that tickles my fancy that is not already on my list, as well as allowing for eBooks and freebies I want to read as I work toward the 50 total books. Seven of the eleven are recently unpacked books that I never got around to reading before they got shoved into storage for nearly 3 years.

1. What Alice Knew by Pauala Maranz Cohen
2. French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guilliano
3. Chocolat by Joanne Harris
4. The Girl With No Shadow (Chocolat sequel) by Joanne Harris
5. Pantomime by Laura Lam
6. Kill Your Friends by John Niven
7. Sudden Pleasures by Betrice Small
8. Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner
9. Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros
10. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
11. The Girl with the Iron Touch by Kady Cross

This challenge has some other components, like a blog post introducing the challenge and a monthly round up (I guess this can count), plus a prize at the end. I should probably read those details as well, but I’ll get to that. The official end to sign up is Dec 1, 2014.

Wish me luck.

A Simple Summer

I am having the kind of summer I will never forget. Not because I traveled the world and saw amazing things (even though I did)  or participated in something unusual such as building a home in a third world country. It will be the summer I remember because it’s the last summer I’ll see in a long, long time.

Flashback: As I settled into my digs in Camden Town in May, I noticed a trend among my recent law grad friends – outcries of fear and loathing, aka, bar exam prep. Less than a week after graduating and instead of being able to go out in style, like one usually would after completing such a rigorous task, they were thrown right into the next thing. I knew the next step after law school would be to take and pass the bar, but seeing my grad friends in real time and noting their misery put it the timeframe into perspective. Ok fine, I want to play in the big leagues, I have to accept their terms. Next summer.

This summer, I’m doing what I want to do (with the exception of taking enough credits to be considered full-time and avoid the searching death ray of student loan payments being due, and taking the required MPRE in August). With a little more than 4 weeks left before classes resume, I’d say that I’ve pretty much managed to not have to answer to someone else’s demands too much. My biggest commitments are my few shifts at the library for spending cash and making sure I take Zoe out.

Drink, Paint & Be Merry!

I’m choosing to not specifically spend a post on the Boston Marathon tragedy. There is nothing I can say that has not been said better. I love my city, and I know we will be a-okay!

stolen from a friend on FB.

As we know, I’ve been Slacker Extraordinaire so far as law school is concerned. I waste a lot of time, but I also find fun things to do.

Start

For instance, a friend and I got a Living Social deal for a paint class at Living Room in the North End called “Matisse and Merlot.” The Living Social deal was for a 2.5 hour painting class for $22. At first we thought wine was included, but it wasn’t. However, the bar is literally ten feet away, and

Finish

there was a waitress for the event. Easy access to wine (or Sangria, my choice for the night) is just as nice.

If you do no have Living Social or Groupon, what are you waiting for?!

The event is held every Monday and the setup is basically this: sign-in; grab a spot at a table; order a drink; and try to follow the artist as he instructs you on how to make a replica of one of his paintings. Or, you could be like me, and do some of your own interpretation of the image (I spy a purple building!).

All in all, definitely worth the $22! Oh, and if you attend you get a discount on coming back!

Killing Two Birds

Lunch time Thursday was brilliant! I took a walk, directed toward the new Healthworks gym, but also used my handy dandy Boston Food Truck App because I knew I needed to eat lunch before mediation, lest I lose it. So I stopped at the Savory Food Truck, conveniently located across from said gym for the day, and got Kung Pao chicken (Jo called it “grey food”). Then I moseyed across the street into Healthworks, got my tour and my membership.

Brilliant.

Mint Candy Apple

If you ignore my shaggy cuticles and jagged edging, I think the colors go quite well. The color is “Mint Candy Apple” by Essie.

This happened

Swung into Old Navy on a serious bender to buy. Eventually I talked myself down to 1 essential & 1(turned into 3) non-essential item. Fuschia flats are essential, right?

A Post About Boys

Read this article in the January edition of Glamour called, 20 “Annoying” Girl Things He Secretly Loves About You.” It’s cute, so I thought I’d share.