Almost two weeks earlier than last year…

I think I’m in love.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for keen analytic skills, Lincoln-Douglas debate, and the show “Northern Exposure.”

Dredging the river

It’s been a while since I’ve updated and shared some of my thoughts and feelings. I’d like to say that things have been calm and that nothing much has been going on, but I try to be as honest as I can be when writing so as to hide nothing from myself or anyone else.

Things have been hectic and my mind a bit fuzzy for the past few weeks. I’m not a man who enjoys having large disruptions, surprises, or curiosities in his life. I’m fairly sedate, reserved, and orderly (even if I’m also opinionated, unflappably right, and an unapologetic egotist). The past few weeks have been unfortunately full of complexities.

For starters, I am now driving a new vehicle. My old car was still in decent shape and running smoothly, but it had 195,000 miles on it. I wasn’t sure whether it would survive a cross-country drive about a month and a half from now, so started looking for a newer vehicle.
I purchased myself a nice, sleek little Chevy Impala. I know that since I’m a guy, I’m supposed to tout my vehicle purchases for things like horsepower, towing capacity, or torque, but I simply don’t work that way. Truth be told, I bought the car because I thought the little Impala symbol on the back of the car was cute. I probably shouldn’t admit that, but there it is.

While getting a new vehicle is more than enough change in my life to make me less than perfectly comfortable, things got complicated.

It turns out that when the salesman talked to me about the car I was buying, he identified the vehicle as a 2001 Impala. I researched the prices for Impalas made in that year with similar mileage on them, and made an offer based upon those prices. After purchasing the car, I got some interesting news from my insurance agent who ran the V.I.N. on the car. Turns out the car wasn’t a 2001 Impala at all – it’s a 2000 model. It looks like I’ll be getting some money back from the dealership, but that’s a hassle I didn’t want to have to deal with.

On top of all this, I’m stressed out about my upcoming move across the country. The closer it gets to the end of May (when I’m leaving Kansas), the more nervous I am feeling. I don’t know anyone (apart from my brother) where I’m going. I don’t know anything about the State. I don’t know the layout of the city where I’m going, and don’t really know anything about what my life will look like three months from now. That’s a big stressor right now, and I wish that I had some answers to make me feel a little better.

A stressor on top of my worry about my move is the fact that I will be making the move alone. When my brother moved out to Washington, he had two people helping him (myself and his girlfriend). I’m going to have to make the trip on my own, without help, and navigate the highways between here and there. In case I’ve not mentioned it before, I’m a terrible navigator. Even with maps, I usually get lost. Hell, once I had to make a drive from one state to another for a friend’s wedding – a wedding I could get to by following a single highway from my home city to his home city, without turning – and I got lost. Twice. And on one of those occasions, I found myself accidentally driving back toward my home city (and made it about 20 miles before turning around). Needless to say, making this trip on my own isn’t going to be a pleasure trip.

As if this weren’t more stress than I like, I have to fill out my bar examination application. I’m fairly lucky in this regard, even if it is still just another thing clogging up my brain right now. The Washington Bar Exam Application is only a few pages long, largely consists of yes/no questions about whether I’ve ever been arrested, requires no transcripts, only needs 5 years of residences, and requires no letters of recommendation. On top of that, Washington doesn’t use the MBE or MPRE, so I don’t need to worry about those. And as a further safety net, on the slim chance that I fail the bar exam (something I’m actually not worried about), Washington only demands that you re-take the sections you failed the next time around.

As a final level of silliness added to the pile, I’m on jury duty. I’ve tried to get put on an actual jury now for the past ten years, and despite being called almost a half-dozen times, I’ve never been needed on a jury. I get a call to be on federal jury duty for the entire months of April and May, which beautifully overlap with finals, writing theses, graduation, studying for the bar examination, and a cross-country move. I’m starting to wonder whether the courthouse clerk has a sick sense of humor.

In reality, I’m not really dealing with anything major, I suppose. Even so, it feels like there is simply too much on my plate right now for me to concentrate on any one thing for very long. I work much better when I can devote my time and effort to a single, large intractable problem for long periods of time, than I do when I have to deal with a half-dozen small issues.