The Adventures of Chris

See, I”m not the only one! –> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12921677/

I wish they wouldn’t worry about the movie and instead would bring out the tv series on dvd…but everyone already knows how I feel about this.

This weekend I went to the first of three weddings I’ll be attending this summer. The more weddings I attend, the more I’m starting to think that I’m not a wedding kind of guy. They’re so much work (planning for a year?), so much money, so much attention paid to the bride and groom, and too much pressure to put on a cool wedding. Plus, I can’t take anything too seriously, and weddings tend to be pretty serious occasions. For instance, the bride and groom did this water ceremony on Saturday that I couldn’t take seriously, They each poured water from two small blue vases into one larger vase, then they both took a drink from the the larger vase. I get the symbolism there, but I couldn’t take it seriously. I was thinking it would have been a lot easier if they had two small soda cups from 7-11 and then poured them into a 7-11 big gulp cup or something. Then the couple did this choreographed first dance. I can’t take those first dances seriously either. Once again, I’m not saying this because I’m an emotionless robot, but these sorts of ultra-serious acts don’t really demonstrate romance in the way that I’d prefer.

Another thing about weddings is that I almost never like the little party favors that the guests get. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I just never can use the stuff (some of the stuff is really stupid, like giving a really small photograph of the couple in a small frame, with names and dates written on the frame - totally useless.) The couple on Saturday left a note at each seat saying that they had made a donation to a hospital in lieu of a gift. I thought that was great. They also gave out some chocolates, which I thought was good (edibles are good). But they couldn’t help themselves…they also gave out Asian-style spread fans. It’s gifts like these that I don’t understand. Almost no one uses these trinket gifts, but now I’m stuck with the guilt of throwing them away or letting them take up room in my place. As if to drive my point home, the two other guests staying with me this weekend left their fans at my place.

I’m not saying I don’t like weddings though. They lower my per wear costs of my suits. They offer guests the chance to try new alcoholic drinks that they didn’t want to spend $10 for. They’re great at reuniting old friends because people prioritize weddings over anything else. Nowadays, you can go months or years without seeing friends that live in the same neighborhood, but once you tell people it’s a wedding, they drop everything and start walking, flying, or swimming to get to the wedding. It’s kind of neat. It seems like only weddings and deaths have this power over people.

Also, a side tip - if you order a pizza from Frankie and Johnny’s on Monday or Tuesday, order the 2 for 1 special they have on those days.  They won’t offer it to you.  Jerks.

Just wrapped up my first week of bar prep (well, 2nd week if you count the other class). So far it’s actually been a little better than I thought. With a four hour lecture every day, I thought that I’d be bored out of my mind or completely overwhelmed. It hasn’t been that bad. The professors that teach the material are actually pretty entertaining (I think they get good money for this gig, so they have to be engaging enough), and the material is being presented in a pretty straightforward way. Of course, we covered two of the more interesting subjects, and the memorization is the bad part.

Today I ate dinner in Westwood (steak sandwich and a Grolsch at Westwood Brew Co. followed by ice cream sandwich at Diddy Riese followed by… more ice cream at Rite Aid) and found out that I am only three degrees away from one of the co-founders of Google.

Tomorrow I’m going to a wedding. I just got an email saying that a college friend just had a kid. Susan just pulled out a really long, white hair off my head.  Talk about three signs that you’re not that young anymore.

I usually post at the end of the day, but I discovered something today that requires immediate attention.

As I was leaving my subletted house today, a person said “excuse me, can I ask you a question?” I said sure. She said “over here, in the front yard, is this a tomb?”

That’s right, a tomb.

I said “uhh…what?”

She said “over here.”

I don’t know how I didn’t notice this earlier (but my brother and Susan didn’t either).

Here’s the front of the house:

Here’s the “tomb”

Here’s the tombstone info:

BURRELL

OUR BELOVED

Husband Wife
Clifton Pearl
1894 - 1953 [Can’t see the years]

Ok, so I’m obviously really alarmed by this and I’ve been thinking about it. Here are the facts:

- The person who asked me about it asked if it was for a pet, but, upon closer inspection of the tombstone, you can see why I don’t think it’s for a pet. Pets don’t usually live that long, nor do they get married, right?
- The owner of the house is a man, age 65 meaning he probably was born right around the time Clifton and Pearl ate it.
- The owner’s last name is not Burrell, nor does it sound like Burrell.
- I don’t think he’s from California originally (judging from his accent).
- All of this leads me to believe that he’s not related to Clifton and Pearl, but the question is, if he bought the house with that in the front yard, wouldn’t he have removed it?

- Also, the home is technically in Brentwood, where the houses are fairly nice and the people are fairly rich and white. Doesn’t this stick out like a sore thumb? It would stick out like a sore thumb anywhere except Transylvania, but in Brentwood, CA….

Oh, and by the way, I’m paying an astoundingly low rent for a Brentwood house…

UPDATE:

This owner has a guest house in the back that is rented by another woman. I asked the woman about the tombstone and she said that no one was buried there….it is just the owner’s really weird decorative sense or sense of humor. On one hand, I’m relieved. On the other hand, I’m really concerned about owner’s weirdness.

Another thing that was weird was that, while I was watching dishes, I looked out the two windows that face the street. I noticed that the tombstone is totally in the line of sight, but I didn’t know what it was because I saw it from the back. To boot, this guy has a Christmas ornament angel that hangs on the curtain rod of that window, so, from the vantage point of a dishwasher, the angel is right in line with the tombstone.

Although I’m obviously relieved that there isn’t a real tomb in the front yard, I’m still disturbed that this tombstone is probably still the tombstone of a real person.

And finally, via AIM:

Chris: did you read my blog today
Chris’s Brother: reading it now
Chris’s Brother: HOLY SHIT

Things that have happened in the last few days:

- I started Barbri, a bar review class, this past Monday.
- I moved into my subletted place on the Westside, so I’m getting to live the independent life for a few months. Steph, this means ice cream.
- I’ve cooked dinner the past two nights. Someday I want a fish spatula. I also realized I can skip a trip to the gym if I just grate a lot of parmesan reggiano.
- I was reunited with my old junior high classmate, Jason Suh. He’s in my Barbri class. He hasn’t changed one bit.

- I got to say the phrase “I didn’t like law school much.” What made that special was that I got to express that thought in the past tense.

- I’m not doing anything but sleeping, going to class, studying, and cooking

Done.

Big day today

#1 - Made my first omelet with my new All-Clad pan

#2 - Went to the Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. It was fun.

We got to make our own strawberry shortcake pile for $4 (as much as you could stack in the bowl)

We had a slice of “strawberry pizza”. It wasn’t that good.

They also had a crafts section that sold really tacky stuff. Why is it that these festivals always have people selling nothing but tacky items? The guy who painted the Jesus painting got pretty pissed at me for taking the photo of the picture. Jesus doesn’t like copyright infringement.

I happily found out that my gigantic graduation cap was too big, even for me. I returned it for one that was a bit smaller, but still huge by normal human skull standards

I also got a haircut from a new barber since my old one is on an extended leave/prelude to retirement.  I was really scared that the new barber would butcher my hair and/or laugh at my hair, but she didn’t do either.  I did, however, jam her electric cutter, causing her to exlaim “wow, you have really thick hair…you’ll never go bald!”  I hope that’s true.

I guess law school officially ended today.  I sent in my last take home final, so that’s it.

To celebrate, I got myself a graduation gift, the All-Clad MC2 7 piece set (with bonus 10′’ fry pan)

Now I own an 8″ frypan, 10″ frypan, 2 qt. saucepan with lid, 3.5 qt. casserole with lid, and an 8 qt. stockpot with lid, all with lifetime warranties.

After my 2nd day of bar prep class, I drove down to my school with two goals - pick up my graduation gown and finish up my 2nd (and last) tax final.

I tried to pick up my gown, but I got denied at the gown pick up window. I owed the school $55 for a reader and they weren’t going to let me graduate without shaking me down first. After paying off the $55, I nervously picked my gown. I actually don’t care much about graduation, let alone the gown, but I’m always nervous about things related to my body size. First, I’m afraid that the gown will be too big and everyone will think that I’m shorter than my stated height of 5′9′’. I just picture myself standing there in a gigantic gown with everyone laughing and saying “he said…5′9′’!!! HAHAHAHA!!!” Gown aside, I’m also nervous about caps because my gigantic anvil-shaped head is terrible for caps. Seriously, there is no skull in America that is worse for graduation caps than mine is. When I ordered the cap, I followed the instructions and measured my skull. Turns out that my head measurement translates to a cap size that is 3rd biggest size in production. Wonderful. The cap says “Size 8″ but I’m still looking for a marking that says “Watermelon.”

After that, I headed to the library to spend some time reviewing the answers on my take home final. After about an hour, when I was about 80% through the test, I realized that I was only a few minutes and a few questions away from effectively finishing law school. I was thinking about being in elementary school, junior high, high school, and college, and how there was always a next step. Now I realized that this could be the last step, education-wise, and that was strange for me.
Two Non-School Related Things

First, I was really amused by the Scrubs season finale, especially the second episode. Any reference to CHiPS and Veal Piccata night at Sbarro is money. So is two guys spending all morning to plan the line “the swelling’s gone down…for now”, the “Elliott Reid Moment Killer” caption, Dr. Cox’s workout pants and the “Love Hurts” sequence. I finally figured out the song at the end of the second to last episode (see below)…I knew I had it on my Ipod…

Second, as I post this, we are about 11 hours away from the kick-off of the Champions League Final between Barcelona and Arsenal. No one but my brother cares (he cares a lot actually), but it’s just the biggest soccer game EVER.

Currently Listening Strange and Beautiful By Aqualung Easier to Lie see related

I had two things on my to-do list today.

The first thing was “8am-3:30pm First PMBR Class”
Today marked my first day of what will be many days of preparation for the bar exam. The class was painfully early, but I was surprisingly awake for the first 2 hours of it. Then my body suddenly remembered that it hadn’t been awake at 8am for a really long time, so I spent the next 5 hours struggling just to keep my eyes open. You’d think I’d have enough to be entertained with - the students complaining about not having enough power outlets to plug in their laptops, the girl sitting in front of me who was miraculously typing with one hand and massaging her boyfriend’s back with the other, and the girl who was so tired that she fell asleep face first on some chairs. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Actually, it will be. I found out I don’t need to show up until 12 tomorrow.

The second thing on the list was “4pm-9pm Take Dad suit shopping.” My dad hasn’t bought a suit for a long time (his most recent sportcoat has some really wild elbow pads and is made of some type of psychadelic tweed material) so we figured that, with two graduations and a formal dinner coming up, it was time to get dad a new suit. Suit shopping for my dad isn’t easy. My dad is an extremely slender guy, so we went to the Mens Wearhouse, where I figured they’d have a better selection of smaller sizes. With the help of a short, enthusiastic saleslady who, I discovered, had no more than 9 upper teeth (don’t ask), we actually found a pretty cool suit that fit my dad. Most suits seem to swallow my dad up, so I was really happy that we found one that fit him (small sizes are so rare that I was just about to suggest we fly to Hong Kong just to get a suit made there.)

While we were looking around, I couldn’t help but flash back to about ten years ago, when my dad took me to the same store (then called C&R) to get my first suit. I knew nothing about suits back then, but I remembered walking into the store with a mental image of me as James Bond in a 3-button black or charcoal suit. One hour later, I was staring at myself in a mirror, wearing a 2-button navy blue suit and realizing that I looked more like a parking valet than James Bond. Although it wasn’t what I had hoped for(my dad said navy blue was the best) , my dad assured me that it looked great, so I went for it.

Ten years later, the roles had reversed. Now my dad was the one wearing the suit, feeling a bit awkward, and I was the one assuring him that it looked great. At that moment, I felt like I had come a long way.
By the way, I chose a charcoal suit for my dad, and he said the color was really great.