Pre-Trip Babble

I'm in far better spirits, I'm happy to report, so this post might contain far less bitching than usual (Cletus from the Bible belt who reads my blog can breathe a sigh of relief.)
What a wierd month this has been. So, I've been working nonstop at BR, which I realize has helped me procrastinate less than I normally would if I, like most normal people who take a year off, have an endless expanse of time.
The trip is literally a day away. And WHAT, pray tell, have I done to prepare.... very very little folks. I must secretly thrive on pressure or something. I'm starting to wonder when this trait of mine is going to seriously backfire on me....

Status report:
What I should be doing: Reading my guidebook or studying my Spanish book frantically trying to conquer subjunctive before embarassing myself horribly in front of tutor and host family. Or perhaps ripping the price tag of that freaking expensive backpack and actually begin to fill it with the giant pile of trip designated clothing/books, etc I have accumulated in the corner of my room.

And what I'm really doing to while away the time: Driving aimlessly down the streets of Cupertino hunting for duct tape. Yep. I really have my priorities together.

But on a real tip, yesterday I made an obscene amount of copies of passport, insurance card, vaccination card (you know...so immigration doesn't think I have yellow fever and have me summarily executed), then wasted two hours of my life in the bank trying to wrestle traveler's checks from the cold fingers of a curiously vacant bank teller. Rushed home. Work the night shift at BR without my usual bitter inner monologue. Why? Because I'm LEAVING god damnit. and nothing can rain on my parade.

In a rare moment of foresight, I hit up the drugstore and piled up on medication (that is, in addition to the two types of malarial pills I'm going to be on)

Also, a couple months ago I went to the travel clinic and stared DEATH in the face as I got shots for Yellow fever, Hepatitis A/B/, and Influenza. Thank god the India trip when I was 15 took care of everything else, by the time I walked out of the office I was ready to swing my stiff swollen arm at the next person walking my way. The only thing that worries me is my medication schedule for malaria. Has anyone taken Doxycycline?....the side effects sound horrendous. I almost wanted to risk malaria when the doctor actually called my cell phone and told me not to even think of it. So much for that idea.


Trip Stuff. Here's my checklist of things to be done at the zero hour:
1. FIND DUCT TAPE. For the love of God, there has to be a store selling this. Maybe I'm inhibited in some way by only knowing 4 roads in Cupertino.

2. Call the law schools (the Big Evil Two) ...AGAIN. I'm pretty sure they're working on getting a restraining order on me, but until then it's time to spam the phone lines. That way, in the event of rejection, when I'm on the bridge ready to say goodbye to this cruel world...I'll know I did everything, including resorting to stalker-esque measures, to get into a good law school.

3. Buy a spanish dictionary, since my old one from college appears to have vanished into thin air.

4. Find my stockpile of contact lens solution (I feel like natural selection should have somehow weeded out people with poor vision such as myself out of the gene pool....Random thought of day.) , swiss army knife, and flashlight.

Where the hell am I going to find room for all this?!

In other news, I'm deliriously excited.

Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, y Argentina. I'm out:)

Quote of the Day:
“Now it is time for me to relieve you, the little people, the burden of your failed and useless lives, BUT as my plastic surgeon always said; if you gotta go, go with a smile!"
Joker from Batman

Gimme some law school love!

Okay...I've turned into a complete psycho over the past week (not a surprise to some people...). I've tried that whole sitting on my laurels and patiently waiting thing... but it ain't working! I've been spending all my free time stalking the law school forums weaving badly written hypotheticals about the chances of an Indian girl from Cali with an undisclosed gpa/lsat getting into a certain school (NORTHEASTERN!) . In the middle of staving off carpal tunnel syndrome, I also periodically bolt outside my house to check the mailbox every 40 minutes. I keep reading the same descriptions of the same two law schools over and over again, to see if I've possibly missed some pearl of wisdom that would improve my chances. And so...here I am, a week away from leaving for my trip, and unable to do anything but agonize for hours over where I'm going to end up.

It's my future, after all, and here I am waltzing off for five months without even knowing which school I'm going to! How very un-Indian of me. I mean, technically I've forced myself to be on the ball in terms of telling schools that I'm going to be gone, keeping track of my application status, but of course it's all out of my hands now. The Monta Vista grad in me is telling me I should be breaking into these colleges Mission Impossible style, dig up some incriminating info about pple on the admission board, and then blackmail them into submission!

Thus far, I've gotten into five schools and waitlisted at two...
Speaking of waitlisting... what a barbaric, cruel procedure. Waving hope in someone's face when they're really saying "Hey we don't really want you. We're just covering our asses! Sit on it suckers!"

I got waitlisted at my second choice American Washington College of Law...and I haven't heard anything from my first choice Northeastern ...not since their polite little email way the hell back in December saying my application file is complete. What about right NOW, huh? What's my application file doing right this minute? Sitting on a desk? In the trash? Shredded? Framed? Laughed at?

What are the chances of me getting a damn answer, one way or another, in the next 5 days?

Oh yeah, and how fucking CREEPY is it that they have a giant advertisement calling for egg Donors on the Law School discussion forum to "help pay the bills." Right. Please slice me open now. If it gets me admission...perhaps. I'm beginning to scare myself.

Wow, okay, I just saw some lady literally feel up a stack of waffle cones sitting on the counter. Whew...and I thought I had problems.

Okay, back on track. On a non-"my future is hanging on a very precarious thread over a cliff with jagged rocks beneath it" note... my mom's gonna be home from India in a few hours back to her, no doubt, action-filled life in Cupertino. I'm sure she's thrilled to be put back in charge of the store. Perhaps betweem hearing some torrid family drama and watching some Telemundo, I'll be able to chill out a little and break out my "Leaving Cupertino" dance (sort of like the Touchdown dance...but goofier looking.)

I've been a good girl all winter long....so Santa/Vishnu/Random Omniscient Being had better put some gas in their car and bring me some goddamn admission letters. I'm done issuing threats.

Now here's a completely unrelated quote...

Campaign Video Narrator: "Last year, Abe said he was fifteen. Now he claims to be sixteen. Which is it, Abe? Better keep your stories straight. He'd also like you to believe he's not a baby eater. But he's never gone on record saying he isn't. Maybe he's too busy eating babies!"
-- CLONE HIGH