unbearable

Law School is absolutely unbearable. I am frightened to think about how many hundreds of dollars I am spending per hour of time, during which the only useful tool I have learned is to pretend to look at the professor each time he glances my way in an intelligent manner. I certainly hope this skill will come in handy during my lifetime. Of course, the professor is also getting paid "per piece" so to speak (pardon the reference, I recently got out of my Wage&Hour course in which we discussed the unfortunate faith of chinese sweatshop workers in New York's chinatown). Thus, he must take up the full time that the Registrar's office has allocated for him. Therefore, I can certainly understand why he feels the need to spend 15 minutes explainig the concept that instead of saying "mentally ill" I should have written "mentally ill persons" in my statutory drafting exercise. Although really, I don't even need the 30-second version of the explanation because the reason I made the error is not because I don't understand the underlying concept, but because I have not proof-read my work. So to sum up, all I needed to hear was "Please proof-read your work", but that would not have taken up the requisite amount of time.

Between my two classes today I went downtown to attempt to buy some pants in the Mavi store. First off, it's always a mistake for a horizontally-challenged individual to try on anything in flat shoes. But regardless, when I was trying one of the numerous pairs of jeans, this super sweet and ultra gay sales gentleman asked me how it was going. I replied that this particular pair of jeans were too tight. He said that they would stretch out. He then said: "May I just say your butt looks great in those jeans! For a caucasion girl, you've got booty!" I laughed politely, pretending that such banter about my "booty" is just typical occurance on an afternoon for me, and said "I know!" Which would be true. I do know that I got some booty. However, I am not quite sure I am prepared to be complimented on it (was it a compliment?) by salesladies (I mean gentlemen). I wound up not buying the jeans. Maybe if a straight salesman was complimenting my ass, I would reconsider. But with the adorable gay salesman - it's unclear whether it's his fashion sense speaking, or just desire to make a sale.

--

Almost forgot. Here is the absolute funniest thing I have seen like.. EVER. There is also a New York Times article about this guy and his little Gates. Isn't it the cutest?

I feel jipped and Robert Redford

Here's my mom, from the last time she visited the apartment. Isn't she the cutest ever?


Mazer 

And here's my dad, in his "I am the kindest and nicest man alive" pose, although looking at this picture, I am starting to believe it.


fazer 


The reason I am posting these adorable pictures, and not the whole family together pictures which I made Vadim take of us this past weekend, when my parents visited for the 2nd time, is because in some unexplainable phenomenon I appear to have a double chin in this weekend's picture. And while some may say "it's because you are sitting a certain way", I still don't want proof of my decline on the internet.

So my parents came, and they brought my 85-year old great aunt who has been hinting to us all that she wants to see my apartment for a very long time. Being childless and having me as her favorite relative of all time, when Vadim & I moved in together, she promised to give us $500 as a moving-in present. I was very polite and said that this is not necessary at all, but she insisted. And you only spend so much time refusing 500 bucks. (Being an only child/grandchild - I am often lucky enough to have cash thrown at me at every opportune occasion, seeing as how my grandparents are too elderly to shop for my presents themselves.) But when my great aunt got here, she handed me an envelope containing the words "$100" and my name on it, and inside there really were only 100 dollars. I think it's ironic that when people reach the age where their minds are not as sharp as they used to be, a blunder such as this must go unmentioned. After all, who in their mind would say "But you promised a present of five times greater value than the one you are currently giving me"? But perhaps it is not as innocent as an older person's memory lapse, but a carefully planned technique that involves giving of the impression of extreme generosity, while escaping with your bank account still intact. It's genius! I am totally going to do the same thing to my grandchildren when I am old and seemingly crazy.

Speaking of crazy, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off cleaning the apartment and cooking stuff to impress my parents and my great aunt. Of course, if I had gotten up before 10:30 to do this, no headless chicken routine would be necessary, but I am still into this whole sleeping-in thing on weekends (and on certain weekdays as well, because I am a bum). But regardless, after my hectic preparation, my great aunt said she really liked 2 of the things that I fed her, those being the bread (which I made my mom get us from a local bakery because I knew that an 85-year old russian woman would not be caught dead eating my whole-grain bread) and herring from a can (although I did cut up some onions and poured olive oil and vinegar on it and arranged it all pretty on a plate). She didn't comment on my lovely salad with hand-crumpled feta cheese, nor on the chicken soup (sucessful might I add, because the first time I tried making chicken soup I managed to have it all boil out), nor on my specially roasted potatoes. But she was all into the store-bought stuff.

And right before she left, she said in this really innocent-sounding tone, while pointing to my face as if it's so cute "oh, look, she's getting little wrinkles there". After which my mother pointed out that I should still kiss and hug her goodbye even though I had every animal desire to hurt her burning inside of me, because ending the day on a sour note would not be kind towards an old woman, and she would have a bad memory of the whole day regardless of how fun it was in actuality. So I hugged. And kissed.

-----

And now for a totally random comparison. When I watched the movie "Closer", I was not sure why Natalie Portman finally broke it off with Jude Law, because she was so hopelessly in love with him and he finally came back to her. The friend I saw the movie with explained to me that Natalie realized that Jude would not be happy with whichever answer she gave him - if she told him that she didn't sleep with that other guy, Jude would not believe her. If, on the other hand, she told him that she did sleep with him - he would start bombarding her with questions (like "how was he?" etc.) and he would never be able to get over it. Basically she could never win because men just can never leave infidelity alone if it is staring them in the face. They can be in denial about it ever taking place, but once the truth of the matter is on the table - the woman can't win. And today, I caught a portion (ok, like 90%) of "Indecent Proposal" on TV. And it was the exact same thing. After Demi slept with Robert Redford for $1 mill, Woody simply could not let it go, even though he let her do it. And during their heart-wrenching fight, when he was asking her "How was he? was he good, just tell me!" Demi said that she can't tell him, because he does not want to hear the truth. He just wants her to say that Robert Redford was aweful, but if she says that Woody won't believe it anyway. Man, it's the exact same thing!! I don't understand why THIS is the only part of infidelity that men tend to focus on - the mechanics. But if it's in these 2 movies, then it must be true.

The Gates

Vadim & Me in front of the Gates 



Just me now 



Rrrrroman 


Today, after hearing all the hoopla about the Gates in Central Park, Vadim and I, Roman and his lady friend went to check out what all the fuss is about. If you ingore the 18 degree weather which made my fingers feel like they were going to fall off at any minute, the gates were pretty cool. The place was a zoo, however, which doesn't appeal to all. But it does appeal to me. I love the crowds in New York. I think that's the whole essence of this city.

Afterwards, we met Dasha & the Rus for some sushi. And after the sushi, we made our way to a super fancy desert place - Payard. It's one of those places where they charge you $6 per pastry, and this fact alone makes you go "oooh" and "aaah" when you bite into the pastry, regardless of whether it's actually good or not. I was frankly NOT that thrilled with the pastry, but in keeping with the fancy theme, Vadim and I bought 4 more pastries and a dark chocolate bar to take home with us. It cost us a grand total of 26 dollars. But we got to carry a very pretty bag on the subway home with us. My parents and my 85 year old great aunt are visiting us tomorrow, and we can impress them with our Payard pastries. I hope they don't mind sharing, because we couldn't afford to buy each of them a pastry.


When we got home, we watched I Heart Huckabees. I have never in my life seen a more retarded movie. Seriously. But I must be wrong, because supposedly New York Times loved it. I am not even going to read the review, so as not to get upset. I was upset enough during the movie.

I took 3 books out of the library yesterday - the latest book by Amy Tan, "My Life" by Bill Clinton, and "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When I went to bed last night, my instinct was to reach for the Amy Tan book - the easiest read, of course. I should have gone for Fitzgerald, but I made a compromise with myself and started the Clinton book instead. It is pretty entertaining, but I am not sure I could get through the entire thing.


I am so sad, but unfortunately I have reached my monthly picture posting limit on www.flickr.com, that's why until the end of the month I have to use this other awful service. So if you perchance want to see my pictures, as in actually see what's in them - you would have to click on them, and further click on the zoom-in thingie. Otherwise the pictures are tiny or distorted, and I am not advanced enough to fix it.

Merry V-day

My Valentine's Day started with a fight over our refrigerator (which decided to break down for the 2nd time in a span of a month). But love does conquer all, as evidenced by these:



I hope they are good, but I'm not sure I will try any of them because I ate so much batter that I feel a little nauseous already. Yes, I made them from scratch, which means I had to use the mixer to mix things. A lot. I am exhausted. I considered doing another wondefuly thoughtful thing for Valentine's day. Namely - ironing Vadim's shirts. I did one, but when I started on the second one I decided that I simply can't love anyone THIS much. I considered leaving the ironing board and the iron out as proof of my attempt, but then figured it wouldn't be such a good idea. I mean it could create all sorts of unrealistic expectations of future shirt ironings, and I wouldn't want to do that.

I feel that you shouldn't do too many domestic things, because if you go overboard it will all turn into something that you are always expected to do, instead of being a lovely and pleasant, but intermittent, surprise. Seems to me that being overly domestic will quickly turn a woman into an underappreciated, and taken-for-granted housewife. On the other hand, if most of the time you do nothing but then come dashing out with some fantastic dish - imagine how impressed everyone will be!

This picture is mostly for my mom, because I know that she can't possibly wait until Sunday to see these things I've put on the wall in a pathetic attempt to give the apartment some ambiance, as discussed yesterday.



This picture actually makes it look like my walls are this cool yellowish color, when in reality they are just old boring white.

Valentine's Day

I considered making brownies from scratch (as opposed to from a mix) with peanut butter swirl for Valentine's Day (seeing as how I don't currently have my own income for to buy presents with, and ingredients for brownies would run me only around 5 bucks or so) but I am sort of out of control with eating sweets again with Ikea cakes and chocolate ice cream residing in my freezer, and I'm afraid I simply cannot handle having a full batch of brownies here as well. But it is Valentine's day and a way to a man's heart is through his stomach, blah blah. What's a girl to do?

I need to decide on a paper topic for my education law class, but instead I'm updating my blog, and doing all sorts of completely un-paper-topic-related things. I wish I was further along in my apartment decorating process. I see all these pictures of people's apartments (albeit they are random internet people, but they're people nonetheless) and it seems that their apartments all have so much more personality than mine. Maybe it's because I don't have much of a personality to begin with, and this is why my apartment lacks it as well. It's one of those "what came first, the chicken or the egg" dilemmas. I think my apartment definitely needs plants to infuse it with personality. But I am afraid that my new plants will suffer the unfortunate fate of the plant that Dasha gave me (may it rest in peace). But perhaps if I stick to green plants and not flowers I will do better. I just don't know. It would give me a huge inferiority complex if I killed another plant, so I am afraid to venture into buying another one.

I went to the gym tonight and tried to recreate all the weight-lifting techniques that my personal trainer bestowed upon me during my 2nd (and unfortunately last) free session. For some reason though, I was the only female in the whole gym (do women have better things to do than work out at 9pm on a Sunady night?), and I felt very uncomfortable doing weird leg lifts surrounded by intimidatingly buff men. So I didn't do them. I only stuck to exercises that made me look cool.

And now, for the audience participation portion of this evening, here is a picture of my Soviet Union first grade class. Can you tell where I am?

Stew

This post is about the chicken stew that Vadim and I made today. But because it is not too pretty (although very very delicious), I figure first I'll post the picture of my pre-Valentine's Day roses.



And now on to the stew. Here is what we did:

Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken (this is wholly optional, in fact if I never deal with a whole chicken again, it will be too soon)
- carrots (2)
- red onion (1)
- mushrooms (a bunch)
- watercress (or parsely)
- basil leaves (not the fresh kind, the kind from the spice rack)
- potatoes (3 large)

The cooking part
1) Make about a cup of chicken stock. (To do this, we put several left over chicken bones, half a carrot and some salt into about 2 cups of water. Water is brought to boil and the foam is removed, then stock is simmered on low heat for about half hour or until it tastes good.) I am not sure if it's only a russian thing to eat chicken bouillion/stock - but since I had some left over, I ate it (or should I say drank it) and it was so so good that I wish I made a whole pot of it instead of just a little.

2) Chicken (preferably thighs/dark meat) is cut into small pieces and put into a pot. Also in go the chopped carrots, onion, mushrooms, watercress, potatoes, salt and pepper. Pour in the cup of chicken stock.

3) Cook the stew for about 2 hours on low flame, or until the chicken and potatoes are soft and taste good. I also added in a little bit of olive oil into the pot and some water.

Like I warned above, it's certainly not the prettiest of dishes, but I can vouch that it tastes (and smells) great.

Dinner!

Tonight I made veggie friend rice (adopted from Sonsi) and Salmon in Dijon Honey Mustard source taken in part from Heather and in part from some random stranger on this very helpful recipe website. It was wonderful!

Here is the progression of my dinner preparation, which was actually fun. I can see how this cooking thing can be somewhat enjoyable (never ever thought I would say this).

I started with sauteing some vegetables.


I also made brown rice.


I then mixed it all together, added 2 eggs, soy sauce, and some dill and came up with this:


I didn't really take pictures of my salmon during the preparation process since I didn't think it would be as exciting. But here is the final dinner, picture taken by Vadim:




And here is the areal view, picture taken by me:



I think I like my picture better. We were stuffed. Now I'm ready to go and run all of this off (or so I am trying to convince myself).

Too many tasks and threading

I am getting completely overwhelmed with the whole wedding planning business. Many many months ago my mother ordered me this planning softward called "Smart Wedding", but I was all like "there's no way I'm using this, it's just a scheme to make people spend money on something they don't need. I'll be perfectly fine with just using excel". But of course I realized that it can come in handy to have a program, and during my 3-hour horrendously boring night class I spent the entire time entering my guest list (from the excel spreadsheet) into the program. Manually. Because the program is not smart enough to import an excel file. Or maybe they think I should have been smart enough never to use an excel file to begin with. Anyhow. You can do all sorts of useful things on it, like see a pie chart of your guests, with what percentage of guests are the bride's, the groom's, the family, the friends, etc.

And then there's also the function that releases your stress hormones, or should I say elevates them to insanely high levels. This is the "tasks" function. According to this function, I am way overdue to complete like a gazillion tasks. Thankfully, you can change the tasks, and delete the ones that are ridiculous, such as "shop for outfits to wear on your honeymoon" and "take the time to tell all your family and friends how thankful you are to them for helping you plan this special day." As if with all the other tasks, I need to make the task list longer with these fake tasks. But even after deleting all the superfluous tasks, the list still left me totally flabbergasted at all the things I have yet to do. I thought that having hired a photographer and a videographer I was pretty much 90% there, but apparently "Smart Wedding" thinks that's nothing.

It's amazing how I have SUCH a light schedule - with only 3 days of classes and 2 days off plus a weekend, and I still feel like I need more time. Today I haven't done an iota of work, but was all busy with dumb tasks, such as waxing my legs, picking up the car from it being repaired (or should I say from having a scratch removed that only Vadim could see with a magnifying glass), doing a huge amount of laundry, and cooking myself lunch. I say cooking because we no longer eat out. Like ever. This morning Vadim cooked himself lunch. I think that's insane. By "cook" I don't mean made a sandwich, but I mean that he actually made himself pasta and chicken... around 7:30am. Just to have something to eat at lunch, instead of buying it.

It turned out that russian ladies do manicures and waxing at my newly-discovered Queens beauty salon. Russian ladies can be awfully blunt. For example, when asking if I would like to have my eyebrows threaded (much hipper than just having them waxed, I suppose), I explained that I pluck my eyebrows myself, and so I can't have them threaded right now - because there is nothing left to thread. The russian lady then proceeded to examine my eyebrows, and asked me "who did this to you"? I repeated that I, myself, did this to me. She then told me, in russian, that my eyebrows are either "horrendous" or "terrible", based on the proper translation. She said that I must not touch them for 3 weeks and then come back and she will make them beautiful. And even though I was not too thrilled with having my eyebrows insulted in such a crude manner, I WILL come back in 3 weeks and do exactly what she says. Maybe there is something to this russian way of doing business - insult your customers into paying for your services.

Family Fight

The Notes Saga (Cont'd)
Yes, maybe as suggested I should sell my amazingly compehensive notes as Takenote on red paper. So I wound up getting an email from the girl who actually needed the notes, writing me a novel about how sick she was and why she missed class. Bottom line being that it was so super nice that I almost cried and sent he all my notes with glee. But afterwards, I wrote one of my typical emails to my "friend", saying how offensive she was and explaining my position, which is much easier to do in an email, when you are not being yelled at. In response, she appologized for offending me, but pointed out that she was offended as well - for the fact that I "blew her off" when she asked me a personal favor, considering how over our friendship, she has done so many favors for Vadim and I. This is where I feel something that can only be describe as "ick..". Unfortunately Vadim decided that he just won't stand for such injustice, and interjected himself into this email fight to remind the "friend" of how we did favors for her as well. Seeing as how my "friend" is a tax specialist, something tells me that Vadim will have to find another tax "friend" or learn to do his taxes himself.

Law School in a nutshell
Sometimes I sit in class and I simply have no idea what is going on. Everyone seems to be involved in a discussion, trying to figure something out, and if I were to be asked what the discussion is about, I wouldn't be able to even approach the truth of the matter. And this is not because I am stupid, because I am pretty sure I am not. And in such situations, when later on I need to learn the material, I always wind up teaching it to myself and realizing that it's not difficult. But during that class I just sit there, browsing the internet, reading the NYtimes online and feeling like a completely detached idiot. It is the most depressing feeling, it makes me want to jump off of something. I don't know why this happens to me, and why everyone seems to care deeply about issues such as wage and hour law, and I want to crawl under the desk from boredom.

Athleticism
But on to cheerier topics. Today I have a free session with a personal trainer at my gym. I am really scared that the whole session will be spent trying to convince me that once my free sessions (there are 2 of them) run out, I should quickly sign up and pay for a gazillion unfree sessions. I really can't stand it when people try to sell me things, so knowing me I will tell her right away that there is no way in hell I am paying for a personal trainer in addition to paying the already excessive membership fee. And then knowing her (not that I know her yet), she will give me all sorts of horrible fitness advice just out of spite. So maybe this wasn't that cheerful. I'll try again.

Brunch
When I was in college, we used to do the weekend brunch thing - at least I think we used to do that. But I haven't used the word "brunch" (nor had it) since college. It's awfully sad I realize. But this sunday, we are finally having the brunch with my wedding photogapher and her husband. I am so excited. Partially because we are going to an absolutely amazing restaurant, and partially because I think it's so cool that I'm going to be friends with my wedding photographer. Who else can say that?

Immoral Rabi
On a similar topic, I finally was able to have a whole TEN MINUTE conversation with the guy who's in charge of my wedding (I don't want to say "wedding coordinator" because I don't have one of those, I am not that fancy). I asked him if he could recommend a rabbi for me, who would be willing to marry me without striking a pose (figuratively speaking) about Vadim not really being Jewish according to the Jewish law. My "coordinator", who we shall call "Igor" (that being his real name) said that the two rabbis he is recommending to me will not have a problem with anything. This for some reason struck me as extremely funny. It sounded as if we were dealing in some kind of mafia transaction. I will have a rabbi who just wants to get paid, and has no moral reservations about ANYTHING. Ain't it terrific?

I am sick of doing these topic tags. I'll admit I was only doing them because I have a feeling that without them nobody would bother reading (not that I'm so sure that they'll help, but it was worth a shot). Anyway.. We are considering Hawaii for our honeymoon, except I am a bit worried about the sharks and the 13 hour flight. Is that something I should be concerned about?

Oh, and FINALLY - my absolute favorite new website, which I found due to Heather is www.dooce.com. I love love love it.

Some People.. or maybe it's me

I just got a call from my friend from law school. She was a year ahead of me and already graduated. We're not close friends, we're sort of "couple" friends - we go on double dates with her husband and Vadim and I, but I always feel sort of awkward speaking to her on the phone, and I wouldn't feel comfortable spending time with her alone. But regardless. She calls me to ask if I'm taking a certain course this semester, which I am. Turns out that she knows a girl in that course who missed some lecture(s) and now needs somebody's notes. I say "Sure, no problem. What dates did she miss?" And my friend says "Well, I don't know what dates she missed. She maybe just needs an outline of the whole course. But I know you don't have it, you make it as the semester progresses, so why don't you email me your notes each week and I'll forward them to her".

My eyes bug out. I love this sort of thing. So I say, pretending to be stupid just to avoid the uncomfortable discussion that's bound to begin any second "why? Just have her email me or talk to me in class and I'll send her the notes for the dates she missed." To which my friend replies "But that's going to take forever. What do you care? Just send me all your notes." Here we go, I knew this would happen. So I start explaining that I don't understand why I would send anyone ALL of my notes when this person (whom I don't even know) needs my notes for 1 specific lecture. And granted that it would take me 3 seconds to email the one file which contains all my notes, regardless I don't think it's fair, I never thought it was fair to have someone skip class but have the benefit of my dragging my ass to that same class and typing every word the professor says for two hours straight. (I didn't say this whole last sentence part to my friend). Just how it would never occur to me to ask anyone for all of their notes, and I don't think it make sense for her friend to ask this of me.

And in response I get this huge loud lecture about how I have a completely "unbelievably ridiculous outlook" on this whole thing. How my attitude shocks and baffles my friend, who would send her notes to anyone who asks her without thinking twice about it, without giving a damn. She is basically lecturing me and taunting me saying, "It doesn't matter, so just send me all your notes now." Although I was almost ready to cry (I can't handle confrontations, nor can I handle being rebuked for no reason what so ever by someone so ridiculous), I actually stood my ground. At some point during her chastizing of me, I said "fine". She said "fine what?" I bet she thought that this is me giving in and agreeing to everything just to get her off my case. It was tempting. But instead I said "Fine, tell her she can email me and tell me which notes she needs, and I will send her those notes." Then there was an "ok" from my friend, pronounced in a tone which hinted that she thinks I am a total nutcase, then a few moments of utterly unberable silence and then we said goodbye.

I don't understand people. I don't understand why they at least can't respect someone else's views instead of pushing their own, even if their views differ, when that someone else has a concrete and easily articulated reason for doing what they are doing. It must be so nice to go through life being a total asshole and thinking that everyone owes you something and not even think twice before asking for ridiculous favors.