Thursday, December 10, 2009

Odds and Ends Thursday 37

School’s been out for a week now, but things have been busy nonetheless. Between the LSAT and the Christmas party today, I’ve had enough reasons to get out of my house and avoid the lazy boredom of summer. But I’ve kinda been looking forward to the lazy boredom of summer. There’s still 6 or 7 weeks left of summer break though, so I guess I’ve still got time. Here are some other odds and ends from the past week:
  • I was sitting having a beer with Sarah’s uncle after the LSAT, and his son walked over and introduced himself, and then asked me, “Are you Filipino?”
  • The event today was pretty fun. It was like guerilla food preparation assembling sausage dogs for 900 children, but once we refined our system, we reached a decent level of efficiency.
  • I didn’t write captions for the pictures in last Friday’s blog, so I didn’t point out that the brooms people are using in the bottom picture are actually teuila flowers. It seemed so wrong.
  • Dustin emailed me. The plane I took to American Samoa and back is a De-Havilland Twin Otter. I’m sure that means something to you.
  • I wanted to listen to the theme song from the hit TV show “Wings” during the plane ride, but I think the version I have on my computer is a WAV file, and my iPod recognizes it, but refuses to play it. So I had to settle for singing it in my head. It’s good flying music.
  • Then I listened to a This American Life podcast about infidelity. It was not good flying music. It was quite depressing, in fact.
  • I heard the Peace Corps Inspector General didn’t like us holding our Swearing In ceremonies in the host village, and that all future Swearing Ins (Swearings In?) will be held in Apia. It seems a little strange and counterintuitive to me, but whatever. I’ll roll with it.
  • Koa was gleeful about “scooping” my blog by posting pictures from the Swearing In before me. But then the poor guy forgot the connector cable for his camera. Maybe next time, Koa. Maybe next time.
  • My favorite new Christmas recording is Mason Jennings’ cover of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.
  • Reason # 6,452 it’s lame to not have a constant Internet connection: When uploading a CD into iTunes you have to manually enter in the song titles and album information. Lame.
  • Paul is adamant about listening an entire song on iTunes so it will be tallied in the “Play Count”. I have inexplicably adopted Paul’s rule. Maybe I can sleep better knowing my play count is accurate?
  • There was nasty rain this morning as I trudged across town to get my ride to the Head of State’s house.
  • The rainy season is in full effect. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and it doesn’t sound like rain; it sounds like an ocean of water is being dumped on my roof—like I live under a waterfall.
  • The “Harry and the Hendersons” episode of 30 Rock was great. John Lithgow traumatized me as a child playing the bad guy in “Santa Claus: The Movie,” but ever since 3rd Rock from the Sun, the man can do no wrong.
  • I swear my stress level in regards to the LSAT leading up to the test and during the test itself was extremely low, mostly because I’m not completely convinced that I want to go to law school. But waiting 31 days to get my results is painful.
  • I think we were administered a different test than was given to test takers in the lower 48. So most of the commentary I can find online doesn’t pertain to my test. 25 more days.
  • For no reason I can understand, the LSAT includes an essay section that isn’t graded or scored. The whole thing seems pretty pointless, but it still gets sent to any law school you apply to, so there’s incentive to write the thing. In the opening sentence of mine, I used the word “burgeoning”. As soon as I wrote it, I asked myself, does that word mean what I think it means? Is that how it’s spelled? Is it really a word at all? I got home and checked and it does and it is and it is. Phew.
That’s all I got. I hope you’re well. Pictures from today’s party below.


The Head of State (at far right) visits the face-painting tent.


The kids.


Assembling sausage sandwiches.


Santa showed up.


Apparently the makeup crew from CATS was in town.


PCV Erin's school came to the party.


The event was sponsored by both SamoaTel and Digicel, the two rival cell phone service providers. It was funny to see the SamoaTel guy taking down Digicel signs.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I spelled the word judgment "judgement" about 40 times in my LSAT essay. Looks like law schools don't read them :)

And I totally understand how you feel- I wasn't stressed till after either... but the day we got to call in (yeah, I'm ancient, and the internet was not available as a means of checking scores when I took the test), I was flipping out. I'm sure you did great... and once you know, we can talk more about whether you want to do this silly law thing!

Ben said...

Wings! Good flying music indeed -- Schubert A Major Piano Sonata, ya? Regards from LA, Matt.

Jane said...

Paul is adamant about a lot of things, don't you think?

Good post. I like the "Cats" comment. That was funny.
I bet you do just fine on the LSAT.