Least Annoying

I bet no one expected that I would be considered to be the least annoying family member in any situation.  But I recently saw this old YouTube video of Zeb climbing in the Gunks:

You can hear us all commenting annoyingly, in our own ways, in the background.  The funny thing that I discovered, though, was the first comment on the video:

leftystrat62

Nice vote of confidence about the integrity of the rock from your balayers as you go thru the crux. And of course we have the guy at the belay who is NOT leading(doohh) saying how it's easier to heel hook to the left. I think you should keep the encouraging female climber and drop the other dudes.

Most people who experience climbing with me in real life do not have that reaction.

For fun, another angle:

Milk

Now that me and my siblings have (mostly) moved out of my parents’ house, there are far fewer milk crises.  They have gone from going through a gallon or more per day to a half gallon every few weeks.  Meanwhile, though, I have to supply my own milk.

Before I left for England (Fall 2008), milk prices had been climbing for a while.  It wasn’t hard to pay over $5/gallon.  I was pretty shocked when I got back this summer, then, and was paying only half that at not-cheap supermarkets.  It turns out that while I was gone, there was a “dairy crisis” marked by falling milk prices.  More delicious milk for me!

Annual Milk Prices (from “Understanding Dairy Markets”):

2008 Milk Prices:

It looks like now I can drink twice as much milk!

Don’t Worry, They’ll Learn

A few months ago, I came across this article in the NYT.  The general premise is that the author took a climbing class with IME at Cathedral Ledge with his children, who consequently behaved better.  The first paragraph of the article, though, is 180 degrees opposite from how things work in our family:

For three days last month I had a break from family squabbles and smart-alecky retorts. My adolescent children didn’t tell me to “wait a minute” when I needed something done. Phones were shut off, for the most part, and neither a DVD player nor a computer was turned on.

We do nothing but squabble, smart-aleck, and tell each other “hold on, wait a minute,” usually while we’re on the phone.  Oh well.

Student ID Adventures

So, when I was in England last year, the Harvard ID that I got as a 1L expired in June.  Which was a problem that I had anticipated well in advance – in the summer of 2008, before I left for England, I spent some time trying to track down the new ID that I would need to have upon returning in Fall 2009.  The ID office told me authoritatively that the law school registrar would have my ID ready and waiting for me at “registration” in Fall 2009, and not to worry.

So, over a year later, “registration” for my final semester of classes happened online with no discussion of my ID.  No problem; I went to the registrar’s office.  They acted particularly clueless, but told me not to go back to the ID office, and instead just wait.  It would come over from the ID office eventually.  So myself, and the other three HLS students who did the Cambridge program with me, waited.  For about two weeks.  Meanwhile, we had to go through complex negotiations to get into the library and the gym; we learned the secret codes that we had to say to the desk guards to get them to let  us in without our working IDs.  Every so often, one of us would get motivated and go bug either the registrar or the ID office, but they would just say, quite authoritatively, that the other office must have them.  A few of us managed to get some “old-style” IDs missing one of the magnetic stripes they were supposed to have, but that was about it.

Finally, one of us went to the ID office and lucked out – he got a new one printed on the spot.  Inspired, I marched in there, waited in a 10+ person long line, and was then sent to sit in a chair when I explained my situation.  At first, the guy who I spoke to wanted to send me to the registrar’s office, but I told him very authoritatively that “they sent me here.”  After a number of phone calls, he finally located all of our IDs (which had actually already been printed after all).  They were hidden “in the red box.”

So, fourteen months after I first tried to get my new student ID, I finally managed to get it out of the red box.  (I directed the other HLS/Cambridge students looking for their IDs to go to the ID office and demand the Red Box.)

This is still vaguely concerning to me, because I expect that I’ll need another new ID printed in the spring if I continue to do research here at the Harvard Law Library.  And that will be a whole new adventure.  Stay tuned!

Blogging Again

So, now that I’m done with finals (and pretty much done with law school!) I can start blogging again.  At the moment, though, things are pretty much up in the air.  This spring, I might be doing copyright research work with the Harvard Law library – but maybe not.  I might be living in Westborough, I might be in Cambridge.  I might have tons of free time, I might be extra busy (especially when it comes time to take the bar exam in the summer).  Stay tuned!

I also have lots of old things I never got around to blogging about – so expect more to come!