Dinosaur Bear

A Blog about Stuff and Things

The ABQ Adventure

by

Greetings!

This is the first substantive post for quite some time here on ole’ Dinosaur Bear, and despite my current residence in Reykjavík I’m actually going to be talking about Albuquerque, New Mexico. See, in order to get to Iceland I need to share a few other stories. The first of which was when Meem, Valentino, and I went on an adventure to Albuquerque – henceforth ABQ because who wants to spell that name over and over.

This story takes us back to July, when I needed to go out to ABQ to take the dreaded bar exam. However, this post is not about the bar exam. So if you weren’t looking forward to that, then you can rest easy (conversely if you’re a neurotic fellow examinee looking for commiseration, come back later when I will devote an entire post to the bar exam). No, this post is just about having fun out in the ABQ sunshine.

For starters you might be wondering why Valentino came with me rather than Tristen. Well, it’s true that Tristen is the law student whereas Valentino is the forestry student. However, we have a bit of a “[D]Rad Rotation” that happens when I go on adventures. This time it was Valentino’s turn to go on a bit of an adventure, as the last time I’d done something with Valentino was my trip to Washington D.C.  So when the time came to fly out to New Mexico Valentino quickly wedged himself down into my backpack, which is one of his most favorite things about traveling.


As far as flying goes things went pretty smoothly on the way out to New Mexico (at least for me, Meem had some delays). One nice thing about the trip was that we had booked a hotel right next to where I’d be taking the bar exam.They were even doing some filming right next to the hotel for a forthcoming TV show called “The Brave” – or I guess it isn’t forthcoming anymore. Despite it literally being in the middle of a public forum they told me I wasn’t supposed to take pictures, but fuck you I’m a bus.


The bad news is that the hotel was going through some substantial renovations, though it didn’t end up being that big of a deal in the end. I did find the state of the elevators to be quite funny though. The part of my brain that had engulfed itself with negligence claims and torts had a heyday with the elevators.


You might be wondering why Meem came. Meem wasn’t taking the bar exam, she just came because she plubs me. I invited her, and it just so happened that she needed to go to California for work anyways, so it was good timing. But that is why Meem was there. Speaking of which, when Meem finally made it to our hotel she brought some donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts. Valentino was pretty happy.


In fact Valentino was the first to test out the little coffee maker in our room – a machine which got quite a few uses over the next 3 days.


After Meem had a chance to get settled we went and had dinner downstairs in the hotel restaurant since we weren’t wanting to wander too far that first evening. Just a quick trip down the death traps and we were there.


After dinner it was mostly just chilling in our room since I had to get up early and we were all tired from out travel. We did have a good view to take in though (as we marveled at how little traffic ABQ has – it’s crazy really).


After some last minute reviewing on my part we all got tucked into bed right before 10pm, which is nothing short of a miracle considering that Meem and I have been known to feed off each other’s night-owliness and talk until 4am. Valentino is a responsible bear though, so he probably helped keep us in line.


While the bar exam on the whole is a shitty magical fun experience, one nice thing was that since my hotel room was literally like 6 minutes from the bar exam room. Like, seriously, there was a tunnel from our hotel to the convention center where I took the exam (though I didn’t find it until the second day).


Of course there was a legitimately haunted door down in the tunnel that just kept opening and closing itself, over and over – for three damn days. It was made even more creepy because I never saw anyone else in that tunnel and by all accounts there should have been someone in that tunnel as it lead to a parking garage, hotel, and convention center.


Of course besides the haunted tunnel the proximity also meant that I had plenty of time to come back to the hotel room for lunch. So that’s what I did each day. Valentino was always waiting for me, and Meem usually was though sometimes she was off on her own adventures!


Normally “lunch” entailed leftovers from the night before, but that was fine as I generally wasn’t especially hungry. Sometimes I’d have coffee too since they kept it subzero in the exam room. Mostly I’d just use my brief lunch break to look out the window and decompress a bit.


Then in the evenings Meem took me out for yummy viddles and we had an AWESOME vodka drink that I can’t even remember the name of. In fact I don’t even remember if it was vodka. Meem plz halp.

At the place were had the best version of that mystery drink they had some signs in the bathroom that I really liked, especially the bits about “Life’s a bitch, some days it has puppies” and “It goes on” (as does the world).


I think it was that evening that we realized the ice machine on our floor was broken. One of the hotel employees noticed Meem trying to get ice and said he would bring us some ice. Bring ice he most assuredly did. He brought a huge bucket of ice, I think one of those fancy buckets they put champagne in. Valentino approved.


Each day was early for me (and generally Meem too) but one morning when we awoke we got quite a surprise, hot air balloons!


You might have to make it bigger to see them, but they are there! I think there were 4 or 5 in the sky that morning, so nowhere near ABQ’s massive International Balloon Fiesta, which takes place in October and has over 500 balloons each year (making it the largest such festival in the world). Still, for us simple Midwestern folk it was a good way to wake up. Meem sprang forth from bed like a spring chicken.

After the exciting morning it was back to bar exam things, and during lunch Valentino was dutifully waiting for me at my little “Good Mojo” shrine.


The items on the desk deserve a little bit of explaining. Valentino he is pretty obvious, he’s your friendly neighborhood polar bear! The paper also isn’t really anything special, it’s just some instructions for bringing your ticket to the bar exam. I just placed it on my “Good Mojo” table so I didn’t lose it. It’s the dice and pencils which have some interesting backstories. I’ll go in chronological order starting with the Dixon Ticonderoga Black™ pencil on the right. Yes, that is the type of pencil, and yes – pencils are serious. freaking. business.

Now, I didn’t even get to use my pencils on the bar exam. They don’t trust you to bring in your own pencils since you might, you know, scratch the entire 926 pages of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts on your pencil or something. However, pencils are still serious business, and that Dixon is a Gawd Damned War Hero. Its term of service goes way back to the LSAT days (yes, the test that seems impossibly bad until you realize how much worse the bar is). The Dixon has survived several deployments, and I don’t mean pansy-pushing desk work, I’m talking no-man’s-land-10,000-lives-per-yard-trench-warfare of standardized testing. If Pencils could suffer PTSD, that Dixon would have been the star of Apocalypse Now. So, despite being retired like 5 times over, the Dixon came out of retirement to lend moral support to me on the bar exam.

The pencil on the left is an OOLY Ninja Black Wood Pencil™. You’ll notice that the OOLY hasn’t been used. That’s because it’s a ninja. Whereas the Dixon is a morphine infused beach storming sword wielding bad-ass, the OOLY is the tactical assassin who marks bubbles, without even being sharpened. That’s because a true ninja kills not with their lead, but their heart.

Combined, my pencils unleash a hell onto standardized tests that would leave even Lucifer crying like the bitch he is.

Seriously, those pencils are undefeated.

Anyways, as for the dice – those are actually Valentino’s! They come from the HLS Public Interest Auction, specifically the one from my 2L year (which I guess was the last one since they don’t do it anymore for some dumb reason). Now, they weren’t really giving the dice away. This was more of a “Valentino sees dice, Valentino wants dice, dice are now Valentino’s.” Despite being small, Valentino is still a polar bear, and you don’t mess with polar bears (seriously they are huge). So Valentino took the dice. I didn’t really feel bad considering they were dice, there were tons of them, and I had paid $150,000 to be there. So the dice are more of a Valentino talisman. Whereas the pencils are my lucky objects, the Boys use the dice as their lucky objects. So Valentino was adding his lucky to my lucky for some ultimate luckiness.

The bar exam didn’t stand a chance.

Another fun thing about Valentino is that he tended to stay in the hotel during the day, even when Meem and I were both gone. Normally he is an adventurer, but I think ABQ was just a little too hot for him in July and since we were only there for a few days he didn’t feel like trying to acclimate to the weather (can’t say I blame him). So he sometimes got a bit restless when I was out, and by the time I got back for lunch he would end up in weird places.


I seriously have no idea how he got up there, or how he managed to stay up there once he was there.


Speaking of weather, we got really lucky during our ABQ Adventure. We had warm sunny days with amazing sunsets.


One night we got to watch a heck of storm roll in across the desert, which resulted in Meem and I trying to get awesome lightning shots. We failed, though Meem was ultimately much more tenacious than I was about it.


The next day was the last day of the bar exam, so Valentino and I started off with some yummy yogurt from the hotel’s cafe. It was kind of dumb, the cafe didn’t start serving anything beyond basics until like.. way after it opened, then it proceeded to close right after lunch. So breakfast often consisted of yogurt left over from the day before, but I’m not going to complain too much, it was yummy and it was cheap.


Plus, as mentioned, I normally had much more enticing leftovers to look forward to for lunch.


By the end of the three day exam period I think Valentino was ready to spend some more time with Rad and Grandma Reem.


So that evening we had another yummy dinner, and while it seemed like it was going to blow in a storm (I can’t remember if it ever did) we didn’t get rained on during our outdoor feast, and we even got to see a mini rainbow! [There’s a rainbow outside my windows as I write this too, yay! – Iceland gets tons of rainbows]


I really like eating outside, but I’m super picky about it. I don’t like cold, or heat, or humidity, or precipitation. Basically I’m a scrub. However, this was good weather (until the end, when it got windy) and good food.


There was even a family next to us where the girl had a stuffed bunny rabbit with her. Out of respect for their privacy I won’t post them here, but Valentino made a bunny friend.

The next day we got to sleep in, FINALLY! 😀


But not too much. I had a clerkship interview to get to. So I had to Suit Up® and head to the federal courthouse. I realized really quick that my Midwest/New England suit was not well suited to New Mexico summer heat. Fortunately the courthouse was like a 10 minute walk from the hotel, so I was only half dead by the time I got there. I didn’t even up getting the job though, so maybe I hallucinated the entire interview and in reality I was running screaming naked  around the courthouse from a dehydrated delirium until I got tazed. Who knows.

After the interview Meem and I decided to have some fun, so we headed out to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center which is a REALLY cool center owned by the 19 Indian Pueblos of New Mexico.


Meem and I had a delicious lunch there before checking out the really interesting museum. We then got to watch a traditional dance, which was one of the big reasons we decided to visit.


During the second dance Meem got a call, or text, or pigeon, something, from the owner of a certain Breaking Bad RV Tour Company. The message? Spots had opened up on the afternoon tour. Meem and Taco Excitement to Overdrive.

We’d originally had tickets to the afternoon tour, but due to the clerkship interview we had to cancel them. Well, then the clerkship time and location got changed anyways, but by that point the tour was sold out. So while I had made peace with not getting to follow in the footsteps of my favorite meth lord I was super ecstatic to get to go after all. So we packed up our stuff, stopped through the Cultural Center’s gift shop for some goodies (Meem got an awesome bracelet) and then headed off to the Breaking Bad tour since we didn’t have much time before it started.


The tour started right near the spot we had eaten dinner at the night before so we were at least conceptually familiar with the area. We got briefly lost but then literally ran into the owner of the tour company as he was walking out of a store and Meem was on the phone with him. Ah destiny! We were meant to be on that tour.

—SPOILER ALERT—

I’m going to take a moment to stop here and say that what follows is a brief recounting of the Breaking Bad RV Tour. If you know me, you’ll know that I LOATHE spoilers with the fury of 1000 dying suns. Legitimately, I abhor spoilers to an unnatural level. As such, I sincerely try to avoid spoiling anything as much as is humanly possible. So I want to warn you that if you haven’t watched Breaking Bad (BB) and/or Better Call Saul (BCS), first, go watch them. Second, I’m going to be as non-detailed as possible with the tour, but by its very nature there are going to be some spoilers. So I’d suggest not reading what follows if you want a 100% pristine take on BB/BCS. Again, I’ll go light on the details, but the photos in and of themselves will sort of spoil something.

Anyways, back on track.

As soon as we walked around the corner, boom, there she was – a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder recreation vehicle and motor home, with signature yellow and orange stripes. The same kind as featured on BB.


Now it’s not the RV from the show, that one is owned by Sony and is actually going to be in the Smithsonian! Yes BB is that good, fight me brah. However, this is literally the same model, so it’s as close as you can get. Plus, other BB tours take you around in a shuttle bus or something, why do that when you can use an RV which replicates the one from the show in exacting detail?


I’m talking, autismo level detail (and I know such details as an autismo myself). Heck, they even got things right that a lot of BB fans forgot about – case in point the crossbow bolt from Season 5 Episode 1.


Meem and I were he first ones to arrive. The owner had asked us to show up early since we hadn’t actually paid and he was just holding our spots on a good faith basis. That was fine, it gave us more time to explore the RV before the rest of the group showed up!


Now, when I say they really paid attention to the details on the RV, I mean that – and not just on the outside, they even recreated the interior!


Yes, there were a lot of props/memorabilia from the show that they had placed inside that obviously weren’t in the show, plus the required stuff like, you know, seats. But on the whole it was a very faithful recreation of the infamous mobile meth lab.


We took the seats that are second from the front on the left side.


Another little detail that the RV had that another tour wouldn’t have dared recreate was a lack of A/C. Yep, just like in the show. In fairness the RV was supposed to have A/C, but they were having secondary generator issues that day. So we got to cruise around ABQ in the summer heat in a 1986 RV. Truth be told, it didn’t bother me in the least. If you were super heat sensitive it probably would have sucked, but when they were moving and we had the windows open it wasn’t that bad. Plus I found the prospect of trudging around New Mexico sans A/C just like Walt and Jesse to be kind of a cool, or rather, neat – cool not so much.

After getting everyone one board we were on our way!


Joining us was none other than the pink bear from Wayfarer 515.


One thing that I really liked about the tour was not only that you got to see almost all the super famous and recognizable places from both BB and BCS, but also some lesser known locales, such as this area which was converted into a Winter-time Philadelphia for Mike to “break bad” in.


Other areas were easier to place in the context of the show, but more difficult to visually match with their in-series counterpart. For instance, I immediately recognized the junk yard, but struggled to think of which angles and areas we actually saw in the show.


Then of course there were those areas which are so iconic that it’s hard to imagine them not being part of the BB/BCS universe and instead as their real-life counterpart.


Yep, mah’ cluckin’ Los Pollos Hermanos.


Los Pollos Hermanos, or Twisters in the Matrix, former dominion of a one Gustavo Fring. We actually got to eat here as part of the tour and that was pretty bad-ass. Twisters is a burger and burrito place, and we had burritos.

In the interest of time you don’t stop at every spot on the tour, some you just drive by such as Wendy’s hotel.


As well as Jesse and Jane’s house.


Other locations you don’t stop at because the owners get pissy and don’t want you there. I guess I can see it from their perspective, but at the same time I find myself having little sympathy – especially for the BCS locations when they already knew that it was going to be a hugely popular.

However, other locations have completely capitalized on their BB/BCS fame. One such example is the car wash from BB.


They have an entire gift shop inside the car wash devoted to BB/BCS stuff. They also tell you to have an “A1 Day” which is pretty neat.

Right across from the car wash is the billboard they used for the first “Better Call Saul” advertisement you see in the series.


I have a special affinity to James McGill, for obvious reasons.

The penultimate stop on the tour was the famous White household. So famous in fact that a quick Google search will yield countless results about visits to the house which range from people raging about the owners being assholes, to throwing pizzas on the roof, to the owners being portrayed as decent people after all.


Since we were with a tour – and the tour operators (who were extras in the series!) seemed to know the homeowners – we didn’t have any issues. It was really awesome to see the actual house, though at the end of the day it’s a privately owned house, so I’m not sure it’s anything I would have went out of my way to see. However, to see in as part of a BB tour is a must, and to do it in an appropriate RV is even better. And no, we didn’t throw a pizza on the roof – that’s a serious waste of pizza.

The last stop on the trip was the Super-Meth-Lab/industrial laundry, which looked pretty damn much exactly like it did in the show, minus you know, the whole super meth lab in the basement (there is no basement).


After that we headed back towards downtown ABQ.


On the way we had a hilarious interaction with another car which requires a bit of story time.

So if you’re familiar with BB at all, you know that blue crystal meth is a huge plot element. Well, ABQ denizens being industrious as they are have created a blue rock candy which they distribute in little bags – and it looks pretty much exactly like the crystal meth in the show (so much so that the TSA has confiscated it from people). They offer these on the tour, you can either buy them or win them via trivia that takes place on the tour (I won a Heisenberg sticker!). So, basically there is this big bag full of smaller drug bags of crystal meth look-alike candy on a ghetto 1986 RV in ABQ.

I noticed as we were driving around that drivers were largely reacting positively to our presence, my guess is that they either know the owners or were glad for the commerce BB/BCS brought to the city. Either way, one car that was next to us honked and there was a little girl in the back seat who was waving at us. So our driver was waving back, but when we pulled up at a stop light he signaled to the other car to roll down their window. After they did he proceeded to throw a bunch of crystal meth bags into their car for the little girl. It was really funny, because it looked 100% legit like a drug deal, complete with the old junker car and the old junker RV. To make matters even better, some of the bags fell on the ground, so they were picking up all this crystal meth candy off the road. The little girl got a kick out of it, plus its yummy candy. Just your friendly neighborhood meth dealers getting 8 year old children addicted to crystal.

In addition to the crystal meth they also had some BB t-shirts for sale and I really wanted one, but they didn’t have any in my size. So Meem and I bought some drugs candy. In the end they ended up giving us some of the bags as well, I think because the A/C was broken and they were worried about Trip Advisor reviews. Have no fears dear tour people, it was an awesome tour even without the A/C.

I give it 11/10 – would have breakfast again.


There were a lot of places we went to that I didn’t share pictures of here just because I tend to type 5000 words about everything and I need to actually do schoolwork at some point. 🙂

—END SPOILER ALERT—

After the tour was over we were dropped off in Old Town ABQ.


There was some sort of festival going on in the square with live music, so we got to hear that while Meem enjoyed some ice cream in this plaza area.


I used the opportunity to go snag an ABQ magnet for our collection.

After that we had some dinner and then made our way back to hotel. I had to get up at freaking 3am to make my flight. Since I wasn’t sure what to expect with my crystal meth I let Valentino carry those since nobody fucks with a polar bear.


Valentino takes his guard duties quite seriously.

I ended up having plenty of time as there were all of like 5 people in the entire ABQ airport (also featured in BB, by the way). However, the TSA in all their boundless genius had 8 employees working on the Pre-Check Line which had no people in it, whereas they had one person for the entire regular line. So while there wasn’t hardly anyone there, the normal line was being processed so slowly you could have measured it in geologic time. I’m not a social person, especially not at 4:30am. But me and my fellow travelers had a lot of self-depreciating laughs at how the TSA had divided up their employees.

The trip home was pretty straightforward. I had a pretty long layover on the way back, but fortunately there were only minimal delays on top of that. Southwest freaked me out at first because their system made some sort of error and displayed a 5 minute delay as five hours for about 20 minutes. It ended up being more than 5 minutes, but nowhere near 5 hours, thank freaking god. Despite having just taken you know, the bar exam – as well as interviewed with a federal judge – I had to get home so I could pack.

Yeah, I had 1 full day between the bar exam and needing to pack to leave my apartment in Boston – no rest for the wicked I suppose. However, that is a story for next time! 🙂

So that was Meem, Valentino, and I’s ABQ Adventure. Meem had some adventures of her own (including a train up to Santa Fe) while I was getting bar exam’d, but she can make her own blog about that. 😛

I had a lot of fun with them, and it was great to be with Meem during her first NM experience! It’s no real secret that SB and I intend to make our way to New Mexico (someday) so it was fun to get to experience it with family! Having Meem and Valentino there made taking the bar exam much more bear-able. 😀

The next post will focus on what happened between the end of the ABQ Adventure and all of us leaving for Iceland, which was an (very busy) adventure in and of itself!

Until next time,
-Taco

5 Years of Dinosaur Bear

by

On June 6th, 2012 Dinosaur Bear entered the world with its very first post. Sure, the name has changed twice since then, but the general purpose of the blog remains the same. So, although it’s over a month belated – Happy Birthday Dinosaur Bear!


Why the Danish flag? Well, that’s because in many ways Copenhagen is the birthplace of Dinosaur Bear!

Since last time, I’d mentally decided on the next three posts. First, I wanted to address “5 Years of Dinosaur Bear,” second, I wanted to discuss graduating on a bit more of a personal level, and third, I wanted to talk a little bit what I’ve been doing these past couple of months (aside from studying for the bar). Being a fan of efficiency – and realizing that the topics were closely intertwined – I’ve decided to combine the first two posts into one – this post. The third, on the topic of my busy summer, will come later in July (hopefully).

Let’s start with the topic of Dinosaur Bear being five years old. That’s kind of crazy. I have no data, but my guess is that most blogs are abandoned long before they turn five years old. Similarly, I’d imagine that a fair number of blogs that have been around longer than five years have attempted to monetize themselves. While it’s true that Dinosaur Bear hasn’t been generating content for five straight years (there was a hiatus), it’s never been down for any significant period. I’ve also made no attempt to make money from this blog. Some people have suggested it, but I simply have no desire to do so. This blog, was, is, and likely forever shall be, a story to some future version of myself. I’m not particularly vested in generating traffic, and in fact, I’ve made some posts less attractive to search engines in order to decrease the number of people who find them (a few posts have generated a somewhat incredible number of visitors). This is not to say that you are not welcome here, anyone who might be reading this, but rather that money, plus a large readership, are not the goals of Dinosaur Bear, nor have they ever been.

My guess is that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to guess what they are going to be doing in five years. Sure, some people could, but I doubt most of us can say with much specificity what we’ll be up to in five years (either due to personal choice or plinko).  However, I think I’m in one of the higher percentiles of “Are you freaking kidding me?” The person I was five years ago scarcely resembles the person I am today (and not just in good ways, but life seldom gives you a bag of apples without a few rotten ones). I can safely say, that even just five years ago (let alone 10, holy gawd) I would have very likely never have guessed that I’d still be using this blog (thanks again Meem), and I sure as HELL wouldn’t have guessed what I’d have done in those five years that was usual in generating content for it.

But, as someone much more poetic than I once said, “life is odd, with its twists and turns.” Truer words are seldom written (or spoken). As a result, the past five years have, without a doubt, been the most unexpected, craziest, and adventurous of my life. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process. I’ll spare you the 50,000 word metaphysical treatise on what I mean by that, but the gist of it is that I think I’m getting much better at listening to “me, myself, and I” and, consequently, telling the rest of the world to “eat shit.” This isn’t without its drawbacks. I’ve found that I care about far fewer people than I used to, but care about those who are left even more. I’ve also lost a lot of empathy – though in real talk I think law school contributed to that. I’ve learned that what I care passionately about, is not what a lot of people I know care passionately about, and I’ve also learned that I don’t care. While I can completely understand your doubt if you don’t know me personally, if there is one thing I can say about the past five years – particularly the past three – it’s that I’ve spent a lot of time ignoring advice, both well meaning, and ill-informed, and, it’s worked wonderfully for me. This is not to say I’m all-knowing. Oh lawds I am not. I tumble, fall, pout, cry, rage, fail, and fail some more – but in the end I’ve made it, and I’ve “made it” in every single thing that someone told me I couldn’t. You might say I’ve defined myself as an anti-cookie-cutter, and yes, for my fellow anti-cookie-cutters out there, I’m sure you realize that doing this severs a lot of your relationships. It certainly did for me. Maybe I just happened to be surrounded by a larger-than-average contingent of people who don’t understand my desire to be different (or, possibly even more accurately – don’t want to understand), but the end result is that my “sphere” has massively diminished.

But, the thing is. I’m happier – my sphere might be smaller, but the bonds are stronger.

And, it took me a long time to realize that – much longer than five years – but I think that is my connection style, and I’ve yet to see any reason why I should should have suppressed it for as long as I did.

How is this relevant to Dinosaur Bear? Well, for one I am Dinosaur Bear. 🙂

But more pertinently, it’s relevant because if you read between the lines of all these 193 posts, you’ll see the growth of the person I now am. And, I guess if you are good at such things, probably even a prediction of the person I will become (and who knows, maybe I’ll be making a “10 Years of Dinosaur Bear” post – stranger things have most certainly happened). This is not to say that every post is philosophical, of course not. In fact, a lot of them are just me whining, and I like to think of myself as an exquisite cry-baby. Others involve nihilistic overtures of a colonoscopy, or such random topics as what kind of scissors I like, not to mention a nearly endless number of beer discussions. But, if you step back, you’ll see Taco – probably a whole lot better that most people ever will. So yes, dear internet stranger, if you follow this blog regularly you probably know more about me than most people who have known me in-person my whole life but who don’t read this blog. But, give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth – and all that. 🙂

This is all to say that I’ve changed, this blog has changed, and likely you’ve changed. I’d like to think that there has been an upward trend, and the good news is that I think Dinosaur Bear supports that hypothesis.

Which brings me to my next point, graduation. It would be hard to distill “law school” from “Dinosaur Bear,” and in fact one could make a very strong argument that Dinosaur Bear was – at least by implication – a law school blog. If it was, I don’t think it is anymore, but perhaps it was. It was most certainly a blog about me complaining about law school (and other such random topics as people needlessly cutting you off in a foot race), but I think if you go read a blog that is really about law school, you’ll see that Dinosaur Bear is not, and was not one. Regardless of what theme Dinosaur Bear adopted (regardless of the author’s intent – a favorite author of mine, Stephen King, speaks to this much more eloquently), I’m now graduated, and can at that little “J.D.” to the end of Taco if I so wish. Taco, Juris Doctor – or is it Taco, Doctor of Jurisprudence? Maybe both. Who knows, I certainly don’t. What I do know, is that I feel categorically, wholly, undisputedly – no different than I did before having the degree. This is odd, because in the past I felt quite a bit after getting a degree, and you’d certainly think that a J.D. from Harvard would give you some feely-feels. At least, I thought it was odd at first. What do I mean by that? Well, that requires an examination of what brought me to law school in the first place. And yeah, don’t worry, I’m not about to write my memoir here – plus there is no concise and tangible answer as to why I came to law school. And that is actually more of an answer to the question than anything of substance.

Confused? Don’t worry, it’s kind of odd and confusing at the same time. The truth is that I didn’t go to law school because I was driven towards it, and law school was not an end in and of itself, but rather a stepping stone to the future, but oddly enough, not a legal future. Just what future? I didn’t know – and still don’t entirely know. Does that motivation bother you? If so, see the paragraphs above. 🙂

Now this doesn’t mean that I haven’t found some purpose beyond a stepping stone. Of course not. If you’ve read this blog for more than a post or two, you’ll know that I’ve actually grown pretty invested in a few things – most of which I was resoundingly told to avoid as being too “nontraditional” – but so far I’m rocking a pretty good success streak. No, what this merely means is that unlike someone who knew they wanted to be a lawyer, or maybe even more specifically knew exactly what kind of lawyer they wanted to be – where law school was a means to that end, for me, law school wasn’t necessarily a means to any particular end, insomuch as it was a chapter in and of itself.

As such, that I don’t feel a whole lot different because of the degree really isn’t that surprising. The fact is that I feel different because of the experiences that occurred as part of law school, almost all of which were extrinsic to the school itself. Further, I’ve refused – and I mean utterly refused to get “off track” while in law school. This might sound totally, impossibly crazy to you, but at Harvard, it’s easier to get a job with a $180,000 salary and $15,000 bonus, than it is to get the kind of job I want which will literally pay 1/4 (at most, possibly less) of that. And that 180k is a starting salary mind you, it goes up each year (so does the bonus). If your initial inclination is to call me an “ungrateful shit” at turning down such an opportunity (that’s an exact quote, by the way) I can’t say I entirely blame you, but it also shows me that you have no real insight into what I meant by “staying on track.” And – that isn’t something I’m going to explain, the answer lies within this blog if you are really curious. But, I will reiterate, the hardest part of law school, or at least my law school, was – in the words of Gold Five, to “Stay on Target.”

But I did. In fact, I knew it would be a challenge – though I didn’t understand just how big of a challenge it would be, as literally everything pushes against you. But, as I knew it would at least be a challenge, I wrote a “manifesto” to myself prior to starting law school. Of course I’m not sure a “manifesto” is the best title for it since I didn’t revisit it for three years. In fact I promptly sealed it away in the bowels of Gmail and intentionally didn’t open it again until after I’d graduated. However, I didn’t forget about it, nor did I forget about its purpose.

And – I have to say, I upheld my charge to myself. For all I didn’t know when I wrote it, I knew enough about myself to set a high bar, and I most certainly did – but I also most certainly surpassed it.

I won’t share the whole manifesto here, it’s decently long, and this is going to be a long post as-is. But I will share a segment of the penultimate line of the manifesto, as it mirrors this post quite prophetically – despite predating it by three years:

“Law is phase in my life, a brief branch in the trail. My reasoning might not make perfect sense to others, but it is my reasoning to make.”

And, true to my desire to not let THE LAW define me. I kept one little piece of pre-law me very close to the chest, and I’d like to share a brief story about that.

Ask most any law student, or law student-to-be, and they’ll say that probably the most exciting moment in the whole process is when you get the acceptance call, e-mail, or letter. In my case, I mostly got calls which were followed by e-mails and/or physical mailings. Regardless of the format, an acceptance is a wonderfully exciting moment if its a school your invested in, and even if you aren’t, its still a nice bit of affirmation. Likewise, rejections are the exact opposite – and I know those just as well. But, returning to the point, that bit of correspondence (be it digital or physical) is like a small little time capsule that forever enshrines what you felt when you got it. Maybe you don’t remember them all, but my guess is that there are at least two that you’ll never forget. I have two, and I chose to attend one of them. With Harvard, the call came first (and if you include my pre-acceptance interview, I kept that a secret for over a month from everyone except SB – which was also fun), but just before Christmas 2013 I received an email which confirmed that the phone call was real and not in my imagination (a more common thought process than you might imagine with places like Harvard and Stanford, or really any school to which your mind is blown that they actually accepted you). The e-mail, which was itself later followed by physical goodies, was mostly administrative – it’s central purpose was just to send me my ID number. But, the email was more than that. It was, right there, a “Victory” sign to me in a lot of ways. However, over time, something strange happened. The e-mail became less of a “Victory” symbol, and more of a reminder – of the person who got that email – of a person who wouldn’t take that e-mail for granted, even when it got old and law school became mundane, frustrating, and – at times – downright unhealthy.

But, for the Taco who opened that email over 3 and a half years ago, that email was a victory. At the time it was a gigantic “fuck you” to people who no longer matter, though in the ensuing months it become more of a testament to my self ability and less a middle-finger to others (though let’s be real, that can be a fun thing to think about). But, the point is, it was awesome, it was unimaginably, incomprehensibly, amazing. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, a victory – a hard earned victory – but an unexpected one nonetheless. Yet, we are fickle creatures. All those feelings would have normally faded, but I wanted to be sure that they didn’t. So I didn’t let them.

I didn’t delete that email. I didn’t archive that email. I left it right there in my inbox. The first email I ever received at my Harvard address.

And it’s still there.

And it will always be there. I will never delete that email. It will always be the little email sitting at the bottom of my inbox. Because I cannot, will not, compromise who I am.

For at the end of the day, I’ve realized that I am Harvard, but Harvard is not me.

And that email, in its own little way, reminds me of that.

And I won’t forget it.

Because to categorize me as Harvard, loses all of my nuances – it typecasts me into a mold that I’ve sadly learned is not that off-base, but the key word there is that. As law school has taught me, the exceptions prove the rule – but there are always exceptions.

So, while I may be Harvard, that’s just one chapter in my story – and, as I alluded to above, I feel as though my story is one that gets better and more fulfilling as the pages turn onward. I had said that Dinosaur Bear supported that hypothesis – so let’s take a step back and look at these past few years together, shall we? To keep the size from ballooning out of the control, I’m only going to sample one thing from every five or ten posts – but of course the ole’ search bar is right over there if you desire more. 🙂

Over the past five years, Dinosaur Bear has chronicled:


My climb of Vor Frelsers Kirke in Copenhagen.


Some Danish children and I bonding over (their first) marshmallows during Sankt Hans aften – despite not understanding each other’s languages.


My exploration of Edinburgh Castle (in the haar no less!).


A “new beginning” much like this one!


My first food festival.


My very first post devoted entirely to beer.


Getting to visit some wolf friends.


My final visit to my most favorite zoo.


My first visit to Salem, MA – subject of many legends, and more than a couple of theses. (the photo has significance, read the post)


Another 5 Year Anniversary.


SB and I’s first “solo” Thanksgiving.


My many medical escapades.


A lot of posts about the Blizzard of 2015.


The first time I ever had mead.


Its 100th post and the end of 1L.


Tristen and I’s running of the “Big Gay 5K” in Denver, Colorado.


REDЯUM.


SB and I walking the “Battle Road” that gave birth to our nation.


An extremely in-depth (and massively trafficked) post about The Brave Little Toaster.


Me and Valentino going to the Supreme Court of the United States.


“Beersgiving.”


Pig, Pigsten, and I’s arrival in the future home we didn’t yet know was ours.


A whole lotta’ sports.


A Tale of Two Brothers (and a Dinosaur).


A Cape Cod adventure and SB’s BC Graduation.


My literal and figurative climbing of mountains.


A warrior’s conquest of a castle.


Us getting to see Old Faithful.


Our trip to the Arctic Circle to see wild polar bears!


A lighthouse’s 300th birthday.


A whirlwind New England extravaganza with Meem. (we remembered the face of our fathers)


The waning hours of law school.


And, of course, my own graduation from Harvard.

And that’s only about 17% of the posts on Dinosaur Bear – and the post count is only going to grow from here.

That’s pretty crazy, and pretty awesome.

So yes, I’d like to think that things are getting better, a little better all the time. 🙂

~~~~~~

And on that note, I think it’s a good time to wrap up this post.

In parting, I’ll share one final thought.

After graduation Harvard sent out a questionnaire which asked a lot of things about our collective experience at the school, be it academic, social, professional, etc. Unsurprisingly, two of the most prominent questions were, first “Did you enjoy law school?” and,  “Knowing what you know now, would you still go to law school?”

I – perhaps with appearance of paradox (or masochism) – answered “No” to the former, and “Yes” to the latter.

In actuality, the answers make perfect sense.

See, I didn’t enjoy the law in law school. Frankly a lot of law school really sucked – a quick search will reveal just how bad law school is for a given individual’s health. The law aspect of law school is not something I’d recommend. So much of that difficulty is needlessly created by the system itself and doesn’t reflect actual practice (which I enjoyed) – and on that topic you can find many an in-depth post on this very blog.

But the thing is, my law school experience was so much more than a law school experience. If there is one thing you’ve probably garnered from reading this far, is that I never viewed law school as a be-all, but rather as a chapter in the larger story of my life.

And in that regard, if Taco from three years ago said “Should I go?”

I would answer with an unequivocal “Yes.”

Because law school as a chapter – has been the most demanding, most frustrating, most stressful.. yet also, most wonderful, most powerful, most emotional, most liberating, eye-opening, mind-blowing, all around…

…greatest experience of my life.

Thanks for tagging along with me.

~~~~~~

Here’s to five more years of Dinosaur Bear – and the crazy roads that two adults, three dinosaurs, a polar bear, and a pig may travel.


Late night on a road along the Syrian border – Dinosaur Bear gets around.

Until next time,
-Taco

Graduation

by

[Author’s Note: After 11 days of trying, my blog finally worked along enough to let me fix the formatting on this post! Enjoy!]

So, I’m gradu-ma-ate-ed.

That means that if you’ve grown fond of me whining about law school (because some of us do love a good whine after all), that things might be getting a bit dry on that front (or not, more to come on that note). However, if you are expecting me to go a spiritual journey of feels and remembrance in this post then I’m sorry to let you down, that isn’t this post – it’s the next post. This post is mostly going to be a pictorial journey of what’s been happening since last time – which coincidentally was exactly one month ago. Like all my posts, the relevant text for a photo appears below it, not above it.

So, with that said, let’s get started on this image-laden (sorry 56k people, I know you still exist – but I do compress the photos at least) journey with a picture of beer.


Relevant? Well beer is always relevant, but mostly it’s just a good color-coordinated combo that I wanted to share.


For mother’s day the boys created some sorbet for SB. Side note: If you want ice cream but have none and you do have bananas, just slice them up then freeze the slices. Once frozen, process them for a bit and you’ll have banana ice cream. You can add other frozen fruits (as above) as well as things like honey, peanut butter, chocolate, etc. to the mix as well. It’s yummy.


The weather was nice leading up to graduation. Keywords “leading up to.” This photo was taken on my walk to school to pick up my regalia. I thought it would be one of the last times I walked the ole’ route, I was wrong, it’s amazing how many times the law school has sucked me back since then, but I digress.


Here’s the 200th Class Bicentennial Banners on the library.


And here are the commencement information books – little did I know that I’d end up with 150 variations of this book.


A nice shot near the law school, notice the uncut grass. They let it grow and seed prior to graduation.


Another shot of my commute – complete with the nice weather that didn’t last.


We had a bit of a heat wave of up to 95 degrees (prior to temperatures plummeting) and Quixote used the heat to start growing towards Bonsai Buddy Jr.


At one point he was actually getting so up in Bonsai Buddy Jr’s bidness’ that I had to move him.


Despite Quixote’s best efforts to keep us distracted, we did manage to do a bit of celebrating at The Kirkland Tap & Trotter, which was part of our original “triangle idea” which was abandoned due to cost. However, Meem was kind enough to get us a gift card (for both the Tap & Trotter and the 3rd part of the triangle – Bergamot) so we celebrated thanks to her generosity.


They had a lot of beers (much more than seen here) including some familiar faces from my past life.


Dinner was super yummy, especially their hamburger which I guess is something the chef is known for.


Eventually the heat wave passed, and Quixote went back to his regularly scheduled exploits.


Valentino was pleased with the temperature drop (at one point 39.. in May), he always likes cold – as evidenced above by his creative use of part of SB’s coat.


Speaking of the boys, we all finally got to try mochi ice cream – it was a hit in the Taco household.


Back on the law school front, these cool signs popped up as graduation got closer. I kind of wished they’d leave them up normally as I think they are cute.


Despite the dreary, cold weather a lot of the flowers on campus decided to bloom just to give the ole’ feck you to the weather. I liked it.


All the family that came to visit also put up with the weather (which was really only bad on the most important day, lol) and we also had a lot of food, including our favorite waffle place: Zinneken’s.


Meem, Daryl 1 and Daryl 1’s fiancée… let’s call her… DBH (Daryl 1’s Better Half), and I traveled around a bit in Boston prior to graduation. I got to see a few areas I’d never been to, such as the Boston Marathon Finish Line (which was still there – as the year goes on it goes more and more faded and worn until they repaint it the following year).


We also visited a few places I’d already been to a few times, such as the Public Garden.


While there I got to see a Queen Squirrel. As an FYI – in Taco nomenclature White Squirrels are Queens and all Black Squirrels are Kings. This was my first Queen sighting, and I’ve only seen two Squirrel Kings (once in Indiana and once in New Mexico).


It was a pretty nice day, with alternating periods of hot sunshine and warm overcasts.


One thing I’d never done before in the Public Garden was ride the Swan Boats (which have been in operation since 1877).


Meem got all of us (sans SB, who unfortunately had to work) tickets and we got to ride around the pond.


Meem had her good camera and captured a duck and turtle buddy together, I really like the photo so I stole it.


Since we were in the Public Garden we had to stop by and say hi to the Make Way for Ducklings statue (I always like visiting it).


Cheers is also another natural stop.


From there we traveled to Acorn Street, which I had never been to before (and wasn’t even sure where it was at).


It was really cool, but the cobblestone road was CRAZY hard to walk on. I can only imagine what it was like when the entire city’s road system with either this or mud (i.e. horse shit).


We also passed by the Massachusetts State House.


And while we didn’t have time to do the Freedom Trail this time, we did briefly pass over a few parts of it.


One of the first big gatherings we all had was at Legal Seafood, which, as mentioned, is kind of our tradition.


SB’s parents had a later flight in that everyone else, so once dinner was over we went home for a bit before heading back out to meet them at their Air BnB.


Floppsy had traveled with MIL and FIL, so he came home and had a couple-day long sleepover with the boys (they were ecstatic).


The next day all the festivities started (Class Day followed by Graduation Day). Here is a squirrel from Class Day. There were open bars and squirrels, my kind of day.


Graduation Day itself was cold and raining, but the rain held off long enough for us to march over to Harvard Yard with our bagpipe escort, which was pretty cool.


Pigsten stowed himself away in one of the many hiding places of my doctoral regalia, and only revealed himself once he knew it was too late for me to send him home. 🙂


Pictured Above: Law School, Dental School, Medical School, Business School (e.g. a bunch of already or soon-to-be powerful people [and dinosaurs]).


Since this is mostly just a scrap-book-style post, I’m not going to go into all the nuances of Harvard’s nearly 400 year-long graduation traditions (a nutshell version can be found here) but things get started when the Sheriff of Middlesex County bangs a big stick on the ground (srsly).


That’s the Dean of the Law School, Martha Minow. Or rather, she was the Dean, she stepped down after this year to return full time to teaching. I really like her (as did most people I knew). So when she came onto the stage to present our class to the University President (Drew Faust) for conferral of J.D.s we all went kind of crazy. While there’s definitely a bias, I think we were the loudest school, even more-so than the undergraduates. We also had a cool slogan when our degrees were conferred, with President Faust reminding us to “aid in the shaping and application of those wise restraints that make us free.”


My gavel and Tristen’s gavel. While his might be smaller he will be quick to point out that his is real wood, unlike mine.


Graduation Day consists of the Morning University Exercises, then your school exercises (where you walk across the stage to get your physical diploma at your school), then Afternoon University Exercises. It rained during the morning, and then poured during the law school exercises. So while Meem, SB, and I had tickets to the afternoon exercises (main speaker: Mark Zuckerberg) I decided to go home and get dry and just watch it on television (local broadcast, FTW!). It was a good choice. Zuck’s speech was actually really good in my opinion.


That evening the whole family traveled up to Summer Shack to have my graduation dinner. Which is a fancy way of saying I had more beer, including some from Mighty Squirrel Brewing. I liked the glass so much that FIL ordered one for us (and they ended up sending two due to a delay).


I had a sampling of oysters from all over New England (the first of many oysters I’d be having in the coming weeks, though I didn’t know it at the time).


And my main course was a stuffed lobster, which was the first time I’d had a whole lobster in I think my entire life, or at least since I was a piddles on a Florida trip.


Babar the Elephant also joined our household over dinner (no not that Babar) – he was smart and came out during dessert (Floppsy was also in attendance). Babar was a present from Meem, and presently lives on one of our end-tables.


All the boys shared in our graduation. Tristen with his J.D. from HLS, Valentino with his Ph.D. in Forestry from Boston College, Pig with his Ph.D. in Agriculture from Boston College, and Pigsten with his 1st Year Diploma from Clifford School (SB and Clifford graduated from their respective programs, MSW and MBA, last year – as a reminder).


Before everyone left MIL, FIL, Meem, Daryl 1, DBH, and I had breakfast at Zoe’s – where I finally got the sweet potato pancakes, and they were just as good as I’d hoped they would be.


Once everyone had gone their separate ways I collected my regalia and took the robe back to the law school (otherwise they would have been happy to charge me something like $900 for it) – though I got to keep the tam (HLS was the only Harvard school with a tam [even other doctoral programs], and only then because it was our Bicentennial) and the doctoral hood (Meem bought it for me).


In less than 24 hours they had cleaned up the law school graduation area, quite impressive considering how many tables and tents there were – not to mention the fact that all of said objects were soaked, as was the ground.


After straightening things up Babar decided to live near the flowers Meem had gotten me (stylishly placed in my DOJ stein) – though as mentioned he has since moved to an end-table.


While putting some stuff in storage I noticed the beginning stages of the wireless network our building will be getting. It kind of figures, now that we are about to move out they are finally starting to upgrade the internet and other features (such as building security) which they said they would be doing for three years. Go figure, but hey at least the first summer they did facade repair which effectively removed our bedroom windows for 3 months! 😀


After about five days of mundane stuff (bar study for me, work for SB) we set off on our graduation adventure to New Orleans (as a reminder SB got to go all the way to the Arctic Circle for hers 😛 ). We were pretty excited as none of us had ever been there before. We were going to be joined by Aunt Train and her friend who lives in NOLA.. who despite not being a blood Aunt we shall call, Aunt Sommelier.


Our flight out left at 5:45 am, which meant that most of the boys slept in one of our backpacks (but not Tristen, he’s too manlies). I was dealing with a cold and had only gotten 2.5 hours of sleep, so I was kind of out of it, but I also have a really bad track record of sleeping on planes and thus got no more sleep until that night.


The upside to an early flight is getting to see the sunrise!


Since the first leg of our flight (Boston to Atlanta) only had like a whopping 40 people on it (the second leg was totally full, sadly), Tristen got his own seat (and his own coffee) and so he did what most people do and took a selfie.


In fact, one of the flight attendants was pretty enamored with Tristen (and told us how she travels with a bear of her own) and gave him his own items. You could literally see his head growing.


Once we met up with Aunt Train at the airport and Aunt Sommelier picked us up in her Green-bean one of the first things we did was go to a drive through daiquiri store.  Yes, a drive-through daiquiri store. I didn’t know that man could create such wonders.


After a brief stop at Aunt Sommelier’s house we walked into the French Quarter.


After more obligatory drinks we transitioned into obligatory drinks + obligatory food (at Red Fish Grill).


We wondered around the quarter a bit, including through Jackson Square. The rain was getting heavier and SB and I were super tired (and I was sick), so we headed back a bit early on the first night.


The next day we did a really cool cemetery tour (#1).


It was my first time ever seeing such an extensively above ground cemetery.


Our guide was really informative and seemed to have a story about pretty much everything, from the potential tombs of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (one of three seen above)..


..to information about the communal tombs..


..to information about historical figures entombed there, such as a one Homer Plessy, of Plessy v. Ferguson fame (I was pretty excited about that one).


Insofar as cemetery weather goes it was pretty good. It wasn’t raining, and the sun wasn’t constantly out, which was a good thing because when the sun comes out in NOLA it’s like 347 degrees and the air is soup.


At the end of our tour he gave a brief talk in the visitor’s center about the effects of Hurricane Katrina, complete with interactive map. I learned more from his 10 minute talk and display than I did in a month’s worth of media coverage.


After our tour we walked over to Commander’s Palace which was really schmancy on the inside. They have a thing called the “high temperature lunch” where the high temperature of the day before yields the price of the lunch on the day following (for posterity ours was $8.80, or 88 degrees).


This was also the first time in my life I’d had real banana’s foster, and while Commander’s Palace didn’t invent the dish (that honor goes to Brennan’s – see below) it ended up being my favorite of the two times we had it.


I dare say if that doesn’t look appetizing to you then you are probably a terrorist.


After some rest back at Aunt Sommelier’s house, we headed back into the French Quarter, this time with a stowaway.


Then we headed into the Bombay Club for a happy hour and drinks. The Bombay Club was a super cool, old English style club that made you want to oppressively expand your own empire. There were even nudey paintings in the men’s restroom – per the female companions the women’s restroom had no such nudeys. We were lucky, because right after we got into the club it start pouring rain, and after it was done (we were still inside) that was the end of the heavy rain for the day. Seen above is SB and I’s attempt to drink a (very strong) Mint Julep, we were not prepared.


After emerging from 1890s England into the humidity we headed over for a Ghost Tour.


At one of the stops on tour I finally remembered to get a picture of one of the iconic Blue Dogs (which are everywhere, I just kept forgetting).


It was a little drizzly at the start of the tour, but nothing too major.


Eventually the light rain stopped and, thanks to the clouds and time of day it was a pretty decent evening – even for a humidity-wuss like me.


One of the more interesting things on the Ghost Tour was learning about the “Romeo Spikes” which adorn many buildings. Given the name I think you can figure out the details, and from there, figure out why they might have been mentioned on a Ghost Tour. 🙂


Another cool spot was Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar, which is supposedly haunted as heck, and which doesn’t use electric lighting.


Ghosts or no, I was really digging the ambiance.


Another stop on the tour was the infamous LaLaurie mansion – which I surmise probably finds its way into most NOLA tours, Ghost or not.


Like most Ghost Tour locations, the LaLaurie mansion’s nefarious history has been wildly exaggerated, though what did happen was still pretty screwed up, just not to the scale the Ghost books might suggest. 😉


Real hauntings or not, it was a great evening for some spookiness.


SB and I liked our little ghost stickers enough that we took a photo of them to memorialize them.


What’s even better than a Ghost Tour is a Ghost Tour with drinks afterward. NOLA seems to offer up booze every 10 feet, so that wasn’t much of a dilemma. We headed over to the courtyard of Pat O’Brien‘s for their patent “Hurricane” drink.


SB and I shared ours, and I’m glad we did. It was tasty (and went well with the popcorn they bring you), but also strong. 🙂


On our way home I got my first glimpse of “Touchdown Jesus,” which is technically-named but lesser known as “Sacred Heart of Jesus.” (closer photo below).


While waiting for a bus to pick us up Pigsten got pretty enamored with the lit-up entryway to Louis Armstrong Park.


The next morning Valentino made friends with Henry, Aunt Sommelier’s polar bear (who would have thought that two polar bears would meet in NOLA!).


We then took our street car ride of the trip!


While walking to lunch I spotted one of the “Not Haunted” signs they put on properties for sale in NOLA. I found out the night prior that these aren’t a joke – they are legit. As I guessed, the “Not Haunted” properties tend to be worth less than the haunted ones, supply and demand I suppose!


Lunch was a three-course special at Antoine’s Restaurant, which was seriously expansive (both the lunch and the venue) and also haunted.


Pigsten sampled all three of my courses, starting with the oysters.


Then a bit (or more than a bit, rather) of the crawfish etouffee.


And lastly some of the delicious chocolate mousse.


After we finished eating we wondered around the interior for a bit, including a peak into their massive wine cellar.


Antoine’s consists of tons of different dining rooms, each as unique as the last.


Once done with lunch we did some shopping, including a stop in Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, were we acquired a few voodoo objects, including a talisman for Pigsten (pictured below).


That evening we headed to the theater to see Wonder Woman, as well as to have food and drinks.


In this instance, those things all occurred at the same place. Yes, leave the popcorn behind, here you can get good food and good drinks, before and during your movie.


Actually don’t leave the popcorn behind either, they have truffle popcorn. So have popcorn and a fancy Wonder Woman-themed cocktail while you watch the movie.


The morning after our Wonder Woman evening (which was great by the way) we made our way to Cafe Du Monde to try some of their chicory coffee and famous beignets. They were awesome.


With coffee and beignets in our belly (and soon mimosas as well, remember 10′ between drinks – it’s the law) we headed into the French Market where SB wallet’s lost some weight (the only instance of weight-loss on this trip).


After the market we boarded another street car (just in time to escape the rain – continuing our streak!) and headed up into the fancy Garden District, home to very nice houses, rich people, universities (Tulane and Loyola), and beads hanging from rich people’s trees.


Once near the end of the street car line (in a neighborhood just outside of the Garden District with the awesome name of “Black Pearl“) we got off and headed into a college/sports bar called “Cooter Brown’s.” Yes, seriously. Cooter, muh’ fukin’ Brawhns. There was some sort of soccer match going on between Spain and Italy, so the noise varied between regular bar level and blown eardrums. However, I did get to try some Louisiana exclusive beer such as “The Boot” above, which made up for my newfound deafness.


That evening we had dinner at Marcello’s Restaurant & Wine Bar, an Italian restaurant. If you’re wondering why we went to an Italian place in New Orleans when have access to Little Italy in Boston, then you aren’t asking the right questions. When it comes to food the question is never “Why?” but instead “How Much?” to which the answer is always “More.” It was yummy. SB and I shared some tiramisu which was really, really good. Though when my tiramisu normally comes from a plastic box in a bodega my standards are probably not super high.


The next day was our last full day in town, and we started it off with Aunt Sommelier-made breakfast (delicious, which shouldn’t be surprising given her nickname on here), inclusive of some mimosas. Good start.


I was finally starting to feel a little better (on the last day, go figure) and in part I think that was due to my super comfy sleeps’ I’d been having on the futon. This was a real futon, not those crap ones the college kids buy at Wal-Mart for $80.


Once out in the quarter we finally got to hear Doreen Ketchens, a clarinetist who is freaking awesome. I mean, she has her own Wikipedia page, so she’s more famous than you and I ever will be. A cool “small world” side note: our Cemetery tour guide is her cousin.


The first destination of the day was the aforementioned Brennan’s, home of bananas foster and lots of savage sibling rivalry. As you can see above, we were in the mood for some treats, so we got alcoholic coffees to go with them (this should not come as a surprise this deep in the post).


We ended up splitting both the bananas foster and some strawberry crepes between the four of us – both made right at our table of course (that’s half the fun!).


While I liked the texture of Brennan’s bananas foster more, overall I preferred those of Commander’s Palace. Though I’d happily eat either of them multiple times a day.


As a cool legal-ish side note, Brennan’s is right across the street from the Supreme Court of Lousiana. Had I clerked there I would have ended up morbid-f*ckingly-obese (and broke).


The highlight of the evening was heading down to Mississippi River waterfront to Woldenberg Park for Oyster Fest! The fest of course had oysters and booze, but it also had music. The act we were there to see was Aunt Sommelier’s favorite band, “Bag of Donuts.”


Pigsten was a big fan of the tugboats.


Once we got settled near the stage area we got our first round of food and drinks (seen above: a BBQ oyster po’boy and a Pina Colada daiquiri).


Before the concert I’d never heard of Bag of Donuts, and knew nothing other than that they were a cover band. Well, like most live music, they turned out to be awesome (I mean they get halfway there just via the name) and displayed a lot of range and talent. The show was free (always good), but I’d definitely go to see them again if I ever have the chance. SB and Aunt Sommelier acquired some Bag of Donuts cups for us, which are probably a rarity in Cambridge.


After the daiquiri I moved back into beer territory, where I got to try Purple Haze (fitting) from Abita.


After the concert we headed over to the banks of the Mississippi. We even got to go right down to the water touch it (and didn’t mutate, sadly). I’d only seen the Mississippi once before and had never got to actually touch it. Given my love of history, it’s cool to finally get to see such an important river up close.


We also got to see Jackson Square at night, which looked a lot better without the rain.


And, as mentioned, we got a lot closer to Touchdown Jesus this time around.


During a potty-break at the hotel Aunt Sommelier works at I spotted a vampire hunting kit, which was pretty cool.


With the vascular in mind, we then proceeded to get “Hand Grenade” shots which come in giant syringes. I nom’d all of mine and part of Aunt Train’s – they were really good, and full of Everclear, so they were doubly magical.


The next morning we went to Melba’s before going to the airport (sign in Melba’s parking pot pictured above). I had some super yummy shrimp and grits and also a dirty banana daiquiri (which was amazing and also don’t judge me).


On the way out the door we found El Señor Crawdad who had escaped from the confines of Melba’s kitchen and was on his way to Lake Pontchartrain. I briefly considered taking him, but then I figured that his family would miss him and also the TSA probably wouldn’t understand El Señor’s desire to see the world.


The first part of our flight was smooth sailing. We left right on time and had nice views of the Mighty Mississip’.


We also got to briefly see some of the bayou. When I go back to Louisiana I’d like to see more of the countryside, in addition to drinking out of plastic cups in the middle of NOLA’s streets of course.


Our layover in St. Louis started pleasantly enough with a nice view of downtown and the Gateway Arch. We also got to see the Blue Angels taking off from the airport right after we landed, which was pretty cool.


However, weather and runway issues in Boston, coupled with some flight crew re-positioning resulted in us not leaving until we over 3 hours late. Fortunately we had Dunkin Donuts, snacks, and books to keep us occupied, though on the whole it was still pretty frustrating due to the lack of updates.


Once we finally got into the plane Tristen was ready to get home (he is a boy of schedules after all).


When it was all said and done we didn’t get home until almost midnight, but at least I got to try out my brand new Oyster Fest huggie! The next day it was back to work for SB and back to bar studying for me (between graduation and NOLA I was 6 days behind at that point). However, “normal” didn’t last for too long, at least not for SB because only two days after we got back we had to take her to hospital at 6am so she could have surgery on her foot. It wasn’t an emergency or anything, just a scheduled surgery for her left foot’s bunion (she has it on the right foot too, so that will be another surgery down the line). This photo is her prior to surgery, but showcasing her stylish boot. 🙂


The surgery is only a day-surgery, but it’s not super pleasant since they break your bones and put a screw in there. But SB did fine and the boys and I kept ourselves occupied for a few hours in the hospital with coffee and a book (and Tristen’s incessant questions about where they keep the dead people).


Once we were home Tristen immediately began plotting to eat SB’s foot (and probably all of SB), so in addition to caring for SB – she’s temporarily movement impaired – I also have to make sure the carnivores in the house (3 dinosaurs and a polar bear) don’t eat her.


As a reference, Tristen isn’t just trying to eat SB because she’s SB: he even tried to eat me when I had my toe surgery.


Aside from SB’s surgery, things have been mostly normal around the house. I say “mostly” because we still aren’t entirely sure what sorts of voodoo Pigsten has learned how to conjure up with his talisman (seen above).


Pigsten probably learned some dark magic from Thomas III prior to his departure from this realm. Thomas III had differed a bit from Thomas I and II in that he self-fossilized a good while ago and had just been chilling on the window sill for a few months now. Since things were finally calming down I decided to go ahead and bury him behind our building (which is where Thomas I and II also went before arising as pumpkin demi-gods to lead their world conquest). The last two summers I was gone and so SB had done the honors, but this time SB was recovering so I took Thomas III and sent him on his way to Pumpkin Valhalla.


His mortal coil lies between that bush and the small tree at the right of the photo. His ancestors smile upon him, can you say the same?


In slightly more boring news, because things have returned to normal that means that I am now in full-on bar study mode. Since I’m behind, that means I have no breaks on weekends and will studying straight until the end of July. It’s not really a glamorous summer, and to be honest it’s downright frustrating at times because they want you to do a ludicrous amount of work each day, but I’ll manage, I always do. Plus, unlike those earlier photos, the one above comes from what might be my last commute to the law school (had to pick something up and print some things – our printer at home is no longer a printer, it’s a giant plastic brick of uselessness [don’t buy Epson products]). I say might because in writing that I’ll have jinxed myself, but hey, at least it was a super nice day and since classes are out the air wasn’t heavy with crippling depression. 😀

Anyways, that’s that! In just one post we covered an entire month of life events, and big life events at that! I hope you enjoyed the pictures, since really this post was more of a picture-book than a text-story, but now that I look at the stats it’s still clocked in at over 5200 words, so maybe that isn’t a fair assessment after all!

As I mentioned at the start, next time around I’ll talk more about graduating law school at a more emotional level – complete with lots of waxing nostalgic and mentally waltzing matilda, as well as talk about what’s in the future pipeline, and other such things of that nature (and yeah I know I never made a post about Israel, but hey I took lots of pictures 😛 ). In the meantime, I’ll be studying away at the ole’ bar so don’t worry about missing anything super exciting in Taco’s life. 😉

Until next time,
-Taco

Spring 2017

by

Goodness, a lot has transpired since Pig’s Birthday! I just got back from my first trip to the dentist in 3.5 years (and likely last for a few more years) so I figured I’d try to catch up on my blog. It’s kind of a given that my posting game-plan isn’t really going to work out, at least not how I intended it to. So, I figured I’d just lump a bunch of stuff together into a “Spring 2017” post. I guess spring doesn’t technically end until June 21st, but I can always come back and change the title of this post to “Spring 2017 Part 1” if the need arises.

Anyways, as a brief overview of what I’ll be covering today: I’m done* with law school (though not yet graduated), it’s spring, our spring has been mostly cold and rainy so far, Easter happened, Meem visited, I finished my exams/project/paper, and am in the first stages of studying for the bar (in fact I should have started on Monday). I won’t really be covering things in that order, that just so happens to be the order I thought of them.

*done in the sense that I am done with everything I know about – RA or journal work could lurk behind any corner.

Anyways, when we last met it was this little fellow’s 2nd birthday!

Since then, a lot has changed. For one, spring has gotten well.. ok nothing has really changed on that front. It’s just about as cold and rainy as it was over a month ago. Yay May. However, that has not stopped the industrious Pigsten from continuously acquiring more rocks for his collection.


This was covered last time, but serves a good reference point (he has gotten another one since).

Plus, in fairness to spring it started ok:


Winter activities which gave way to early spring activities have now yielded to mid-spring croquet (but not roque, thankfully) fields in the Science Center Plaza.

Sure, I was mostly inside double-fisting coffee as deadlines loomed…

…but at least the view of the outside world was nice!

Until it wasn’t:

Yes, it has been a very cold and rainy spring thus far. Heck just a few nights ago (in May) it got down to nearly freezing. That said, the plant buddies have not been too disgruntled about it, Quixote especially has gone a little grow-crazy.


Look closely and you’ll see the ancient form of Thomas III.

I haven’t done quite as well as the plants. Part of the problem stems from the fact that I have this weird issue when it rains. Actually, I have this weird issue when it drizzles. Basically, if a single raindrop falls someone in a 1 mile radius of me, my pant legs get soaked. No, more specifically, ONE of my pant legs gets soaked. Here’s a good reference picture. Yes, I’ve gotten so annoyed by this I took a photo of my jeans.

First of all. It wasn’t really raining, that was from sprinkling. Yes, sprinkling did that to my left pant leg. Second, it’s not rain dripping off my umbrella due to the angle I hold it. I’ve tested this extensively, plus it happens without an umbrella. So, it has something to do with my gait. Changing your gait in the short term isn’t too hard, but trying doing it for a mile+ straight – it’s easy to revert to the natural way you walk, especially when your body gives you no indication that anything is wrong (like pain). I’ve found that if I walk like a morbidly obese clown-pigeon and purposefully swing my legs out like a cowboy trying to mount hippopotamus that I can somewhat avoid it, but holly hell, it’s annoying. Once I had a client meeting and it was actually raining, not sprinkling. my dress pants looked like I’d dipped one of them into the tub before setting out. It was great. It’s added layer of additional frustration to rainy days for me.

But I digress, yet speaking of fancy things like dress pants – I had my “formal” public interest student closing event at Harvard. Each year the Office of Public Interest Advising has a formal event for students going into public interest work, it’s basically the only fancy closed-door dinner that most of such students will get (either for graduation or otherwise). Or, as one guest put it “This is the kind of dinner you’d have each week if you’d gone to a firm.” What made it especially swanky was that it was held at the Harvard Faculty Club, a building that I had passed by many times but never (been allowed to) entered.

The event overlapped a bit with my Thursday evening class, so I had to bop out of that a bit early and head over. The dinner was pretty nice. It started with free booze, then a surprisingly painless group photo (family photos are infinitely worse), followed by a fancy dinner. Our seating was random, or maybe it wasn’t, but it appeared random to us. I ended up sitting right next to HLS’s Dean, Martha Minow, who is stepping down as Dean after this semester (which also happens to be HLS’s 200th anniversary. Harvard itself is 381 years old in case you were wondering, the law school didn’t exist as an independent entity until 1817). I also got to attend her “last lecture” later on. Anyways, dinner was nice and considered of a several course meal. Valentino conveniently showed up right around the time the fish came out.

He stayed for the berry dessert too, of course. In addition to food and booze (though they never brought me coffee, still bitter about that) there were a few “set” speeches, but then they just opened the mic up to public interest students. It was pretty cool – though I still like to limit my social gatherings. 🙂

Another nifty thing that happened is Easter! We normally try to do something for the Boys and this year was no exception. As we don’t have a lot of money to spend on basket things (nor do we think its necessary) we decided to spice things up a little this year by constructing a little trail of chocolate “eggs” to the Easter Basket. It should be no surprise that Pigsten discovered the first “egg.”

From there Pig honed in on something different around the Yoga corner – an area he is very familiar with.

Valentino was next, with an “egg” hidden behind our TV.

Tristen and Pigsten then used their T-Rex senses to tag-team against a “regg” hidden in some papers on the printer.

Pigsten then hopped over to my office chair (the boy can jump) and noticed something:

Pig sealed the deal, finding the “egg” on a bottle of pills [no pills were consumed].

Next Pigsten found one on top of the paper shredder – yea, though it might appear dangerous, that shredder has been broken for quite some time and no one really knows why we still have it.

From there Valentino took us into the hallway.

Tristen, not one to be left behind, spotted the next “regg” near the bedroom door.

Pigsten was quick to jump back on the trail at that point.

Pig joined the final-stretch fray as well.

Soon enough, the Boys were at the last “regg.”

And from there they dived into their basket to find more treats – this after eating all the “reggs” they’d found of course.

Their basket consisted of cookies and coffee, neither of which lasted very long.

While they didn’t arrive on Easter the Boys also got some pressies from Grandma Reem’ in the form of some Alternative U.S. National Park Service stickers! They were very excited.

Unfortunately that was the end of super exciting things, at least for a little while. We then headed into the end of semester craziness which was sorted of foreshadowed in list form here. There were two cool things about the end of classes though. First, SB got to come to my second to last class, Mediation, which she – I – and the professor really enjoyed (given SB’s profession). Second, my last class at Harvard Law took place in the same building – Austin Hall (though sadly not same room, though it was the room right next to it) as my first “class” during orientation (lol at my first mention of orientation being in the middle of a Beer Blurb, quite fitting – though in fairness I also discuss it here). After class some people from my Section had a champagne toast, it was cold and rainy, but that didn’t dampen our spirits, or the actual spirits.

So those things were nifty, especially the SB visit. It had been since 2012 that we had last sat in a classroom together for the purposes of learning.

Of course the end of classes does not mean the end of projects, plus it also only signifies the start of exams. So, what is a not-so-little-ole’ Taco to do? Go get beer, immediately.

Lots of beer, continuous beer.


In law school: Not even your beer can escape the fact that you are in law school.

And then comes studying. Whether or not “studying” means studying the law, or reading out of our Gravity Galls journal is a matter of debate.

Eventually though I had to burn the midnight oil, or rather, midnight candle. Which also meant that I had to watch Pigsten – the boy is oddly obsessed with flinging himself into open flames (maybe he is Zoroastrian?).

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a “crammer” – a style which doesn’t work as well in law school as it does elsewhere. That said, it hasn’t stopped me from finishing things like outlines the night before a closed morning exam, and this was no exception.


But hey, like I said – beer.

The next day, after my first exam (4.5 hours long) I was wondering around the law school and found some signage about all the stress relief stuff going on. You know, I’ve never actually used any of these services (not even the massage, shocking, until you remember how anti-social I am), but it’s nice to know they exist.

The good news was that I only had two exams this semester. One, in-class, closed, 4.5 hour exam – and one take-home, open, 12 hour exam. The in-class exam was for Federal Courts and the Federal System, which was just about as exciting as it sounds (and also quite difficult to boot). The take-home exam was for First Amendment, which is currently being erased by Cheeto Benito, so joke’s on me for taking that one. Anyways, “Fed Courts” was – along with my ever lingering group project – to be the hardest point in my exam period, so it was nice having that over first. Plus, I was even further ahead than I thought I would be because I had experienced a weird super-Taco period of focus the prior weekend and had managed to nearly finish my research paper for another class. Which was awesome, as that brought me down to: Detail work on said research paper, unknown amount of work on a group project (turned out to be a lot), misc. RA & journal work (see top of post), and one 12 hour exam before I was done, and the more I got done sooner, the better!

Why the rush? Well obviously it’s better to be done than not done, but more specifically, Meem was coming to visit! In fact, Meem arrived the night of the same day I took my Fed Courts exam, so I switched into law school “off” mode for a few days in the middle of the exam period, which caused my inbox to inflate to 87 unread messages, but I didn’t care (truth be told a lot of those are now deleted without ever having been read). Meem’s flight got delayed, but we still managed to be in bed by 1am, which is good for us, especially since SB had work the next day.

I also had a morning meeting on campus the next day, so Meem followed me to campus and did a self-tour. After I was out of my meeting I took her to some of the places she hadn’t been able to see before, such as the Ames Courtroom:

As well as the inside of Langdell Hall (law school library). It was technically exam period and you’re not supposed to have guests, so it was mostly us walking in silence to the few places where you can talk, but I think Meem still got some good photos.

We also noticed that the fountain in the Science Center Plaza had finally been activated! After 3.5 years of wondering and waiting, the fountain was on! We had never seen it on before – ever. In fact, “long” ago while searching to see if it even was a fountain, I found out that it has a name – Tanner Fountain – though I couldn’t find any evidence as to why it hadn’t been turned on in at least 3.5 years. Other than the mention of needing “some significant restoration” in a Harvard Gazette article, I could find nothing. So, coupled with recent renovations to the Science Center itself, I’m guessing they finally finished these restorations (though I never visibly saw them working on the fountain). Either way, it’s alive again, and hopefully it lasts through the summer!


I was so excited I had to text this photo SB at work.

Now, as excited as I was about the fountain, the big event of the day was going to see the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees at Fenway Park! SB and I hadn’t done this – and to not do so seems kind of like a failure for someone who lives in the Boston area America. SB had been to like 45 billion MLB games before, I’d been to one, and Meem to none. The Boys got a private clubhouse courtesy of Clifford, but Pigsten decided to go “slumming” with us common folk down in the Loge Boxes, which turned out to be really good seats – courtesy of Meem!


Pigsten enjoying some pre-game popcorn!

While the weather hadn’t been great, it was “decent” that day, in that – while cold – it didn’t rain at least. The worst part was when the sun initially went down and the wind kind of picked up, but after awhile (maybe it was those $10 beers?) it wasn’t too bad. At the very least it wasn’t too much for Pigsten, and, like Tristen, he is cold-sensitive.

As mentioned we had pretty good seats, here is a no-zoom panorama of where we were at. Meem got some better photos with her real camera, but you get the basic idea.

As for the game itself, the Red Sox lost, and not only did they lose, they didn’t score once. Plus, the Yankees – who obviously won – didn’t hit a home run. So it wasn’t really the most exciting game of baseball, even by baseball standards – which are like, in the same realm as “paint drying” 90% of the time. HOWEVER, it wasn’t really about the game, as much as the experience of going to Fenway (oldest MLB ballpark) to see the Red Sox against the Yankees. Or, as I put it, “When the Sox and the Yankees play the winner is always… America.”

So, all that considered, it was a great time with mah peeps. I think we all enjoyed it. I don’t know if Pigsten even knows what baseball is, but he liked the popcorn AND because we were Fenway newblets we all got little “Fan Packs” which included Fenway Dirt – yes, though they were technically for SB and I, the bags are now Pigsten’s.


Of course he let Grandma Reem’ keep her dirt, cause Grandma Reem’.

The GOSOX Citgo Sign (it’s a special sign) sticker technically didn’t come in our newb packs, but since I found it on the ground in Fenway it’s kind of like the Park wanted me to have it anyways.

So that was our cool sports experience. SB and I probably would have done it even if Meem hadn’t been able to come out. But we definitely wouldn’t have had as good of seats, nor would Meem have been there, so it was a lot better this way.

Speaking of other cool sports experiences, HLS has its own box at TD Garden and they were offering Celtics playoff tickets for said box…

…but I didn’t take them (I can hear the distant anal clenches from Daryl 2), because 1 – I’d already seen the Celtics, and 2 – the tickets were still $65 a piece. Definitely not bad for box tickets to an NBA playoff game, but still more than the $10 per ticket I paid Harvard for the pleb tickets the first time around.

But back on the Meem visit front, in addition to going out and about we also had a few nights in where we made things such as a salmon dinner (much to Valentino’s great pleasure) as well as chocolate avocado cake (don’t knock it until you try it). We also broke out some cards and board game. Now, this isn’t just any ole’ board game – this is a board which spent a good deal of its existence banned from production.

Yes, Ghettopoly, a game which involves “buying stolen properties, pimpin’ hoes, building crack houses and projects, paying protection fees and getting car jacked are some of the elements of the game. Not dope enough?…If you don’t have the money that you owe to the loan shark you might just land yourself in da’ Emergency Room.” Truth be told, I’ve had this game (courtesy of Meem) for years. In fact I don’t know how long I’ve had it, but Wikipedia says it came out in 2003, so based on subsequent lawsuits my guess is that it wasn’t long after that. That said, I’ve never actually played it. For one, “Ghettopoly” isn’t really the kind of Monopoly you bust out with new friends, or most people for that matter. So it’s kind of a niche version of a definitely-not-niche game. However, Tristen had been begging to play it for years, so it seemed fitting to bust it out when Grandma Meem was out. It was fun, though arguably more difficult than standard Monopoly due to increased penalties (the cost of the “Emergency Room,” for instance, is 250% higher than “Jail.”). It was a heated Ghettopoly bout, with SB taking an early lead, but I pompified and ended up winning in the end (the Boys were on my side and Pigsten probably ate some money in the process, I mean literally ate it).

The next day we all went out for a walking tour of parts of Cambridge. Meem wanted to see Tory Row, so we took off in that direction to start. However, on the way we took a peak inside Memorial Hall since Meem had never been in, and while Sanders Theatre and Anneberg Hall were closed off to visitors (as usual) we did get to see the main chamber with zero people in it – not a common occurrence given Harvard’s status as a tourist attraction.

After Meem took a peek into Anneberg Hall (it was lunch time for the babies) we headed down into Loker Commons (basement) and then on to Tory Row. While I’ve been up Tory Row at least three times before, one thing I had not done was explore Longfellow House – the longtime home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and before that the headquarters for General George Washington from 1775-76.

The interior wasn’t open for the season yet, but the front gate to the grounds were open, so we meandered around a bit. Meem saw a sign for the gardens and headed straight for it, turns out Longfellow House is “hiding” a very nice little garden area behind it next to the Carriage House. It wasn’t the nicest of days, but a lot of the flowers were in bloom in spite of the lackluster spring weather, so it was still pretty.

From there we continued along Tory Row, before cutting back down towards the Charles River, and then walked that for awhile before crossing the Anderson Memorial Bridge (finally out of construction – and coincidentally the bridge SB and I drove Lillian over a lifetime or so ago) towards the Harvard’s Business School and Soldier’s Field Athletic Area.

Despite having some classes with business school students, doing HBX CORe, and just generally not living that far away from it – I’d never been to the business school (though I’d spent many nights standing at their edge of their campus waiting for a bus after football or hockey games). So this was a first for all of us.

They have quite a nice campus, and some of the trees were bloom which made it even nicer.

The inside of Spangler Center and Bloomberg Center (yep those Bloombergs) was really nice, and had some similar design features to the law school’s Wasserstein Hall, which I guess isn’t totally surprising.

After we were done being B-school tourists (so I’ve now seen the medical school and business school – maybe I’ll see the law school someday) we moseyed over to the Harvard Stadium – which, not only were the grounds unlocked, the stadium itself was open, which was a nice surprise. Naturally I did what any normal person would do and immediately tried to figure out how to get the normally-sealed-off roof of the coliseum stadium. Unfortunately someone had predicted my endeavor and shut me down by chaining and padlocking the only way to the roof (absent flight or Spider-Man abilities).


This was as close as I could get.

The next logical step was to go play on the field, duh. So we did.

We even got some photos of me, me+SB, and me+Meem, right on the 50 yard line, they will come in handy should I ever need to lie about being an Ivy League Football Player.

After that we proceeded back over into Cambridge where we engaged what has quickly become a visiting family tradition: Legal Sea Foods.

Ever since SB, Meem, and I ate here back in the before times, we’ve ate here with nearly every round of family that has visited – though oddly enough never on our own (we stick to things like poor people fish in cardboard boxes). It’s really yummy – obviously – or we wouldn’t keep going back. This time around I mixed things up a bit by getting the lobster bisque rather than the clam chowder.

Of course that is just a way of saying that I also got clam chowder by eating some of SB’s. Both were delicious. For the main course I had (more) beer + scallops. I love scallops, though rarely get them due to cost. Paired with my scallops were mushrooms with rivaled Little Zagreb’s as well as a crispy risotto cake, which was as good as it sounds.

After our delicious late lunch, we headed up into the northern part of Harvard Yard to show Meem the place where half the world’s wealth will descend the first part of my graduation will take place (as of this getting posted – in just 13 days!). Meem took lots of photos of the buildings she hadn’t seen, I took a photo of a squirrel.

All was well in the world.

Sadly, all good things must end, and the next morning Meem had to fly back home, SB had to go to work, and I had to return to school. The Boys were upset Grandma Reem’ had to leave, though they were all happy with their pressies from her:

Tristen obtained a Harvard Law gavel, and immediately proceeded to beat the piss out of everyone with it until Grandma Reem’ intervened – he’s been good since (though Valentino took up the whacking work for awhile [don’t ask about his wrist slapper, JFC] – Grandma Reem’ shut that down as well). Pig obtained a wood carving of Ganesha that he now meditates and does yoga with. Valentino got a Harvard Law School snowflake ornament. Between the two of us, I don’t think he cares about the HLS part, he just loves ornaments and snowflakes. And, not to be forgotten, Pigsten got his aforementioned Fenway Dirt (two bags, no less). Good grandma Reem’ pressies all around.

Once Meem was on her way and SB at work, I set about the bloody business of the day, which happened to involve wrapping up my research paper for good, trying to wrap up my group project (silly me), and studying for the 12 hour exam I had the following day. I accomplished two of those three things, if you guessed the group project was not one of them, then you are someone who is familiar with collegiate group projects – as well as right. Nah, that group project would extend would extend itself to the literal final hours of the formal semester for 3Ls. As reference, per our team agreement it was supposed to have been done over two weeks prior – but, well, again group projects, if you understand, you understand. The good news is that a few of us managed to pull it all together, while simultaneously throwing the other team members under the bus (as they deserved, long story, just trust me) so it was still in on time. So it was productive last week.

Though oddly, my end* to law school (see italic note at the top of the post) was not the BANG I expected. But rather, law school sort of went out as silently as any huge life milestone conceivably might. But that is for a future post wherein I will discuss being done with Harvard Law School – this post is more about the lead-up. Plus, to make things even more anti-climatic, I went from submitting my last assignment, straight into an optometrist appointment where I was told they’d need to dilate my eyes (they did not tell me about this beforehand) in order to check up on a potential optic-nerve condition I am at risk for developing (I’m still a-ok, for reference!). So, not knowing this was coming, I had no sunglasses, so I got to rock those shitty roll up sunglasses they give you through CVS, Harvard Square, and Harvard Yard. Actually I couldn’t care less about the appearance, it just sucked being unable to read or use my computer for like 5 hours after being done with law school. It was also pouring rain, like pouring, so SB just brought food home rather than us going out. WOO Taco knows how to celebrate em.’

So, as has become a sort of Dinosaur Bear tradition (see 1L & 2L) here is picture of one of the Boys next to my stack of materials for the semester – which, as usual, does not include casebooks or the 80 F*CKING MILLION PAGES from my group project class. 🙂


Pigsten still rocks his OG’ Grandma Reem’ bulldozer pressie from our New England Adventure.

Yes that little itty-bitty booklet thing on top is the United States Constitution, yep, that thing you like you pretend you’ve read (or maybe that was just me). Look how teeny it is, seriously go read it.

So, that brings us up to the present! If you were wondering about my first dentist appointment in 3.5 years, no – it had nothing to do with the fact that last time I was in an office it involved having my wisdom teeth removed and anesthetics not working and having one tooth drilled out without pain medicine (I recommend it, loads of fun). To be fair, that was technically the second to last time, as the last time was a follow up. Anyways, no, I’m not scared of dentists, I just don’t really think I need to go to them as frequently as they say I do. Sure 3.5 years is a stretch, but I have no dental insurance. Rather, the dentist was rather just a “catch up” I’ve been doing post law school exams. I also went to (as mentioned) the optometrist for a checkup (my eyes didn’t get worse during law school!) and my general practitioner for a checkup. You know, the whole “not dying” sort of stuff that you don’t do during law school.

Outside from that I’ve also being working quite extensively on what comes next, as well as starting (e.g. being really behind on) to study for the bar, but those are topics for another post, which will come at some point after I close out law school, be it via one combined Graduation + “Muh Feels” post, or two independent posts. We’ll see how I feel, though it will probably be two posts because, I’m also taking a quick trip to New Orleans after graduation as my version of a super-mini (drastically preemptive) bar trip (as comparison SB got to all the way to the frickin’ arctic circle when she graduated – and she doesn’t have to deal with the bar 😛 ).

Aight’ – I think that’s all I have for now. See you on the flip side o’ graduation. Also Dinosaur Bear is almost 5 years old – and it’s almost my birthday as well. Dat’s crazy.

Until next time,
-Taco

Twilight of 3L

by

“It is always darkest before the dawn.”
~Abraham Lincoln, King of The Prussian & Candy Land Dominions

Welp ladies and gents, this is it. My final month of law school. I’d be lying if I said the proposition of being done made me sad, but at the same time it is kind to crazy to think about how much has changed since I wrote say.. this post. Older and more bitter wiser and all that.

Naturally “last month” hides a lot of baggage. For instance, as of my writing this post I still have:

2 – Informal Mediation Sessions
1 – Formal Mediation Session
5 – Team Meetings
1 – Informal Presentation
1 – Formal Presentation
3 – Reports to Update and Rework
1 – Report to Write
3 – Short Papers
7 – Hours of Journal Work
30 – Hours of RA Work
3 – Client Meetings
18 – Classes
1 – Research Paper
1 – 4.5 Hour Exam
1 – 12 Hour Exam

..left to do.

This is excluding all the minor and/or unforeseen things that can (and will) crop up on or before May 5th – which is the date that I should be done. However, as history has shown me, I have chosen a path which doesn’t lend itself to adherence to silly dates like the official end of a semester, even a final semester. But hey, the upside is that it’s a month – not two months, and once the month is over I am free! … to begin studying for the bar. But that’s a bridge we will cross at a later date.

In the meantime I’ll be attempting to keep stress below meltdown levels and leech as much enjoyment from this last crazy month as possible. In fairness to said month, I kind of knew it was coming ever since like.. January. However, over Spring Break I took a trip to Israel (which involved some activities quite removed from what one would associate with a collegiate spring break). I hope to write a blog post about that trip at some point when I’m not so busy, but I have no idea when that will be. Anyways, once back from that trip school things kind of turn into.. “expected chaos.” So it’s kind of one of those situations where you know what’s going on, but it’s still a challenge to balance it. Pigsten provides a good visual with his Cheerios:

The good news is that it’s now officially Spring! Which means more sunlight and lots of flowers!

And of course that wonderful Spring weather! 😀


Wait.. what?

Yeah that is the correct photo – and in fact that photo was taken on April 1st. April snow, nothing like it! I sort of considered it to be Boston’s April Fool’s Day joke. While I generally don’t mind snow that much, snow in April is pushing my limits. In fairness to SB she got it even worse, as we had a sizeable snowstorm while I was in Israel. That said, not everyone was displeased with the snow – a certain member of the Taco household was honestly quite enthusiastic about the whole affair.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that it was our resident polar bear.

Speaking of cold: I don’t know if it has been the stress from school, stress from school-related things, or the wacky weather but I have ended up with a Middle Ear infection. Yessir, on Sunday I broke down and when to the Urgent Care (only thing open on Sundays) because I’d had a sore throat and ear ache that had been getting worse over the course of four days. Turns out I have an infection, and what timing! I also learned that I have some mild damage to my right eardrum and have no idea how it happened (the Dr. thinks it is Q-Tips).  Anyways, I’m now on medicine and I’m not contagious, which is good. However, as usually happens, one of the boys also got sick. This time around it was poor ole’ Pig.


Pig can be seen here doing his trademark sleep meditation.

When either SB or I gets sick one of the boys tends to get the exact same illness. We don’t know if its a strong empathy sickness or a legitimate biological sickness. Either way, this time Pig is sharing my ear and throat misery. However, as a kudos to SB – she went and got us popsicles! Yay! I’m hoping that our antibiotics kick in soon, as you can tell from above we have a lot to do in the coming weeks.

Plus, it’s Pig’s birthday on the 5th (tomorrow)! He will be two years old! SB and I have a couple rounds of excitement planned for Mr. Pig, so hopefully the birthday pig feels better by then (my guess is that antibiotics + restorative yoga will set him right).

In other news, my Plant Nanny garden continues to grow!

I’m kind of obsessed with the app, and am currently up to 268 seeds (the in game currency). Right now I’m helping Charlie the Clover grow!

Update: Charlie leveled up to level 4 shortly after writing this post! 🙂


Big ole’ clover chin and little purple bud buddies!

I was considering getting a Tulip – but it cost 300 seeds which is kind of crazy. I also considered a Snow Bush, but I figured I should probably wait until next Winter to do that – of course the joke’s on me as it snowed two days later. In the end I settled on Charlie, just a few days after St. Patrick’s Day which seemed fitting!

But anyways, I think it goes without saying (again) that I have a lot to do. Right now the most pressing thing school wise is this utterly god-awful group project class I stupidly signed up for. It’s really kicking up starting this week (as if it ever wasn’t eating up a disproportionately idiotic amount of my time anyways). To make matters worse, the professor told us we could submit a report in a certain format – multiple times. But we we submitted it, they told us it was wrong. This after about 50 cumulative hours of work (my reaction). Giving feedback for that class is going to be fun!

“Taco’s Guide to Why this Class Sucks ASS and you Should Never EVER Take It: Volume 1 – There is Hell and then there is this Class”

In seriousness though, the class is terrible. The good news in all of that craziness is that two of my other classes should actually be pretty chill right up until exam time – and then they’ll suck. But silver linings are good things. Another silver lining for April: Meem is coming to visit us! We have some fun stuff lined up and everyone is looking forward to it!

On another note: if you were wondering about what comes after law school – well, that’s a work in progress that has produced some unexpected frustrations, BUT not all is woe and misery. Things just aren’t moving as quickly as I thought (and hoped) they would and there are a lot of uncertain variables – which I guess kind of sums up life. However, that is a topic for another post. Preferably one sometime after I’m done with my last exam. 🙂

As for future timelines here on Dinosaur Bear, the next post will probably be about Pig’s birthday! After that, look for eventual posts on Meem’s visit – probably coupled with a semester wrap-up, then a post about law school graduation – coupled with reflections on the past three years, and then possibly at some point therein or after, my Israel trip. Those posts will drop sometime between now and eternity. 😀

Until next time,
-Taco

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