Eventful Week Coming Up

This is the final week of the Spring semester, and unfortunately, probably my last semester of law school.

On Thursday, I am going to Dayton for a job interview and if I get offerred the job, I just don't see a way I can turn it down. 

I had hoped that either ONU Law or Dayton Law had a part-time evening program, but neither school does.  Literally, it looks like University of Toledo is the closest school with a part-time evening program.  With a 2.5 hour commute each way, I just don't see how I can make that happen.

The job I'm interviewing for mentioned that they do allow telecommuting, but who knows under what circumstances, etc.  I am not counting on it, but if they allowed me to telecommute a couple days a week, it may be possible to return to school part-time. 

It's all just going to be very difficult.  It also raises a question of how realistic it would be to try and start a law career if my graduation would be at an even more advanced age.

If I do get this job, with the working years I have left, the smartest thing for me to do is to work there until I retire. 

So, this could, effectively, be the end of my aspirations of getting a JD. 

I've tried not to be a person who blamed my circumstances for things.  I've tried to look at myself, and my personal failings, to see what I could have done better, or differently.

As much as I keep trying to find a way to beat myself up for the state my life has gotten to, I just can't find very good reasons to. 

The business?  Horrible timing.  I took on a mountain of debt almost immediately prior to the economy collapsing.  Then, we went on a 3 year streak of continuously non-disastrous weather.  I don't believe in fate or destiny, but if there were some grand force controlling the universe and it had set out to destroy my business in a manner most likely to crater my finances, it would have done exactly what I've seen happen these past 4 years.

I will really miss Law School, though.  I really enjoyed it.  The irony is that my Spring semester is going to be a disaster.  Chances are if I stuck around, I'd have to repeat some classes.  However, it's not so much because of Law School.  It's because of everything else in my life.  My business was horriffic this semester.  Not just slow, and money-losing, but with insane customers who were threatening to sue because we have a 1 year warranty on workmanship, and they experienced problems after almost 3 years. 

These customers.  Oh my god.  One of them lives in a mobile home.  "Repaired" the caulk job we did when we installed a new shower, themselves.  The caulk leaked.  Now, 3 years later, they want us to replace their entire bathroom.  No, I'm not making that up.

The other customer?  Lives in a wet basement.  When it flooded and we cleaned it up, the press-and-stick tiles came up.  We spent countless days drying out the basement, without charging for it, to get the new tile to stick.  It did stick.  Clearly, the place has flooded again in the mean time.  The tiles came back up. Customer wants us, 3 years later, to come and fix them.

As somebody once explained to me, when you filter out the number of people who are thieves, opportunists, flat-out crazy, etc., the number of actual sane people you deal with in any business that deals with the public is startlingly small.  We've been lucky previously, I guess, but both of these idiots decided to jump into my life back in February/March.

Then, a bunch of stuff on the personal side.  Basically, somebody lost their damned mind and it ended up costing me a bunch of money I didn't have, overdrew my account, etc.  That happened in February/March.

2 of the lowest volume business months we've ever had.  Lost a ton of money.  On top of the tons we've already lost.  The biz was within days of being insolvent.  Happened in February/March. 

It is not an exaggeration to say I slept about 2 hours a night all through March, and even today, I'm still catching up.  I am absolutely just worn out.  I still lose a lot of sleep, but nothing like back then.

So, yeah, I could have done a better job of keeping up with school, but frankly, I was just exhausted and stressed out of my mind.  Fell completely behind in school.  I may as well have not bothered going to class.  I was totally unable to focus on anything.

Things are not looking like they'll improve, either.  Which means I basically have to take the job if I can do it.  The business has been nothing short of an insane nightmare and it isn't ending anytime soon.

I had hoped I could limp it along for the next 2 years when the fixed-term debt would be retired, and I could be graduated with my JD.  Unfortunately, it has never ceased to find new and creative ways to get even worse than before.  It continues to do so, today.

I guess in a lot of ways, I'm just sorta numb after all this.  Knock on wood, there are so many ways this could be worse.  I still have my house, for the time being.  Oddly, I'll still have the business, though it's for sale and has been for sale, literally for years, now.  In an economy like this, nobody has money and banks aren't lending money. 

I may have a shot at a really good job.  Not a perfect situation, but a darned good one in a lot of ways.  There are still ways I can get back on my feet.  It'll take better luck than I've had lately, but it could happen.

So far, none of this appears to have affected my son.  That's the one bright shining star in all of this.  I want his life to be as good as I can make it. 

So, I just keep trudging along.  One way or another, something will work out.  However, I don't think I'll be back in the Fall, which sucks.  Law school was one of the parts of my life that I really enjoyed and that I had some control over. 

Again, I don't believe in fate or destiny, but I can't help but say that it was inevitable that because Law School was a positive thing in my life, there was no way I'd be allowed to keep doing it.

Quick Review of the Hunger Games

Since final exams are only a few days away, time for me to review a movie I saw weeks ago.

The Hunger Games was entertaining, but I had some big problems with the movie.  By extension, I would probably have problems with the book for the same reasons.

There are a handful of problems with the story, but at a certain point, you just come across as a curmudgeon.  So, let's just say I suspend disbelief for the many logically unlikely things in the story and let's proceed to the end.

In the end, the main character, Katniss, devises a plan that essentially forces the game's overlords to allow both her and her buddy to live, instead of forcing one of them to kill off the other.

Now, there are three basic ways the story could have ended, once the boy and the girl were left at the end.

The first is that one of them could have had to kill the other.  This is, without a doubt, the most dramatically powerful ending for a story that is about cruelty and survival.  Or, one of the characters sacrifices himself/herself in order to save the other.  This ending would show the most redemptive qualities of the human soul.

They glanced right past that one.

The second way it could have ended would be with the death of one kid, and the suicide of the other.  Or the mutual suicide of both.

The movie leads you to believe that this is an ending so out of the question that the games' organizers were so appalled that they would rather knuckle under to a teenager than allow it to happen.

Let's step back for a minute, here.  What they're saying is that audiences would never accept a love story where two teenage lovers, because they could not live together, took their own lives.

Not only was this idea abhorrent to the writer of the story, but it was, apparently, so obviously abhorrent that the evil empire that sadistically puts on the games was okay with over 2 dozen dead kids, but were completely horrified at the idea that the hunger games could end with two star-crossed teenage lovers killing themselves.

Okay, so not only did the writer of the hunger games zip right past the most powerful emotional ending to a story about surival in a sadistic combat game, the author totally blew it on the most powerful possible ending for a story about star-crossed teenage lovers. 

In fact, if she had really been thinking, she'd have made the two star-crossed teenage lovers from colonies that would never have accepted their love for each other...

Okay, so, the two best endings to the story?  Forget all about them.

The ending they picked?  God, you can tell this was written by a woman, primarily for the benefit of teenage girls.  The two live happily ever after!  Even though their mom... I mean, the evil empire tells them they shouldn't!  And how does Katniss, the clever protagonist, do it?

She locks herself in her room, tells her mom that she's ruining her life, and threatens to kill herself if she doesn't get her way.

I mean, she tells an evil empire that if they don't respond to Katniss' little tantrum, she'll give them the most romantically compelling ending to a Hunger Games that could ever possibly happen.  So, naturally, they give in to the tantrum.

Really?  I mean, they couldn't possibly allow both the kids at the end to die!!!  That's just insane!  Could never happen!  What sort of drama would that create?  I mean... other than the kind of drama that is pretty well recognized as the greatest love story in the history of the written word. 


Yes, I know this is tween lit, which means it exists entirely in a world where things make sense to a 14 year old girl.  It's a marvel that everybody isn't wearing sparkly pink hats in this universe.  Still, yeesh...

So, overall, somewhat entertaining, but it operates on the level of a 14 year old girl.