It's been a week since my last confession...

Life is interesting, isn't it? Well, at least to me.

Last Wednesday I had my first class in Employment Law, which I was really freaked out about. I am not a lawyer. I have no interest in becoming a lawyer. I cannot recall the names of case studies or legislations that I have been taught. But, as it turns out, I actually have more of that legal information in my brain than I thought. After that first class I realized that I am so far ahead of the game here it shouldn't be allowed. I pretty much just have to show up for the final to ace this class. But I'll still do all the reading and show up every week just to keep in the habit of being a good student. But it sure feels good to know that I don't have to break my back over this one.

And, I think I aced my Management class as well. The final was rescheduled for last Friday, but I wasn't too worried about doing well on the final. OK, maybe a little worried. What I was most worried about was getting our final research papers back and finding out what grade I got on it. This is the research paper I told you about before about the South African power company. Well, after I wrote it, I looked back at the syllabus and saw that I had missed a line in the instructions which said the paper was to be written on a "US public company". Oops. So, I hurried to rewrite my paper on another article I had found, but quite frankly, even if I had had more time to write it, it still wouldn't ever compare to the first one. So, being cocky, I handed it in and let him know that I was fully aware that I hadn't followed the directions correctly, but that I was confident enough in my grades thus far that I would risk the lower grade on this one because I was really proud of it. So imagine my delight when I pick it up the night of the final and on the top it had a perfect grade and the comment "Great article! Well written report!". Sweet!! And this guy doesn't generally write positive comments on students' papers. Yeah. I'm a rock star. Oh, and I think I aced the final too, but the grades still haven't been posted.

So, after the final I met up with Mike for another poker night with some of his buddies that I've played with before. Now, Mike's nickname in that group is Chachi, which means that I have been dubbed Joanie. And I was flattered that someone made sure to ask Mike if he would be bringing Poker Joanie with him again. I was even more flattered that they were willing to hand over their money to me that night. =) I played better than I've played in a while (and far better than Mike did), and was actually a little disappointed that we were playing tournament style because I could have walked out of there with quite a bit more money had I been able to just cash out. But by about 3 am I sort of crumbled just so I could go home. When you've been up for 21 hours straight going to work and taking a final exam, there's only so much your brain can handle and I knew it would be a long drive back from Billerica to my car which was parked in Arlington, and then the rest of the way home.

So, sleepy as I was from the short night's rest, Saturday I headed to the Framingham Premium Cinema for the Best Picture Nominee Showcase. No one ended up coming with me, so sadly, my other tickets went to waste. (How dare my friends have lives and rehearsals and jobs at the last minute?!). But I sort of enjoy going to movies by myself. Never done it for 12 hours straight before, but with those ridiculously comfy seats, I can't say that I minded. And it was so fun. Got there at about 10:30 to trays of bagels, pastries, and fruit, and coffee and juice. Started with Babel, which was sort of a depressing way to start the day, but we had our host, Anthony, to perk us up with some trivia and general absurdity during the breaks. Then came The Queen, some lunch, The Departed, some hors d'oeuvres, Letters From Iwo Jima, dinner, and Little Miss Sunshine. All of this, minus the lunch that I skipped and the dinner buffet which was delicious, but including all the popcorn and soda and coffee we could handle was 30 bucks. Dude. All of us there have collectively started a movement to do this again. We were informally voting amongst ourselves what we should push for - I think we've decided to "encourage" them to do a Godfather marathon. I'll let you know when we've finally persuaded them. =)

And on Sunday, she rested. Well, sort of. While watching a repeat of the 2005 WSOP with one eye, I was also catching up on my reading for the Law class and also working on my stand-up material. At one point, I got so frustrated that I chucked all of the stand-up material that I had been working on a started from scratch. Um, bad idea. By the time I finally got myself back to the original material, I had wasted a lot of time chasing rabbits. Fortunately, I managed to pull one of those rabbits out of my hat at Monday night's class, and totally rocked the room. But, because I lost so much time on it, I don't have it all memorized yet - although even that seemed to work to my advantage because standing there with my notebook in hand forced my timing, and the punches ended up coming out better than they would have had I gone through it at my usual pace. Go figure. But last night was the last class with this group. I'm taking the next series which starts next Monday just to keep it all moving between now and the show on April 2, and it hasn't yet been decided if anyone else from this class is going to be taking the next one. I hope at least one or two will just so I have someone there who already knows where my material has been. But we'll see.

And now it's Tuesday. Tonight is my rescheduled night with Liz and the Gilmore Girls, which means it's my one night that I get to watch TV and just chill out. Always a pleasure. But since she's coming over tonight, that may mean I'm free on Thursday night to get a jump on my 3-day weekend and get out of town again a little earlier than usual. We'll see. I was thinking that being Lent, it might be a nice time to go down to New Orleans by myself. It's not the safest place in the world for a woman alone to spend a weekend, but it's probably relatively quiet for the next week or so.

Oh, and I proudly have done all of the price comparisons for our flights to Australia and Japan, which I'm hoping Dad will purchase this week because come Thursday I will officially have the money to just write him a check for both airfare and the grand he loaned me when Johnny first moved out. How good does it feel to say that you can write a $5k check by the end of the week, huh? And it will be nice to have that taken care of so I don't have to be counting my pennies to save up for it. And I haven't even received my year end bonus yet, so that will pretty much be mine all mine. =)

Pieces!