Clearly I'm Not Going Anywhere Today

Snow Day!!

I'm feeling better today. Still got a headache and lightheaded when I got out of bed this morning, but overall much better.

I woke up this morning to a lot of snow and a message that school was cancelled! Yes, having a snow day when you are 26 is just as exciting as when you are 10. I'll try to take a better picture when/if I venture out today.

Sparrow has been beyond cute lately. She likes to burrow under things and on this particular day she didn't want me to go do my laundry.

In super fantastic news, I got tickets to a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart!!! Claire and I are going on March 31st, which just happens to be in the middle of spring break. Woohoo!!! I'd love to get tickets to The Colbert Report too, but I think I'll wait awhile before I try for those. I'm so excited!

Ok, sorry for the short post and sporadic updates. I need to try and make this snow day as productive as possible and get some reading done. I need to try and get ahead of schedule since I'll be coming back to Oregon next weekend and don't anticipate getting a lot done. Unless watching my brother get married, seeing friends and family, and finally getting to meet Linzie and David's little baby Evy count as productive... which they do to me! However, the school doesn't seem to agree :-)

Sick Sick Sick

My new thing for this week? Having the stomach flu for the first time in New York. I spent all superbowl Sunday feeling like I was dying. Yesterday I still had a fever and felt sick to my stomach. I tried to stay awake and get some reading done, but then I rolled over in bed to take a short nap and woke up 3 hours later when my friend Dave came to the door. I missed my one class for the day. I don't think I would have made it even if I were awake.

This morning I got up at 7:30 to go to class and got out of bed, stood up, felt lightheaded and then got nauseous. The thought of getting on the subway while feeling like that was too much to take, so I went back to bed. Its now 1:30 and I have a class in 1 hour but I have a fever still and am having trouble sitting upright. I don't think I'm making it to this class either. I have one other class at 6pm tonight that I really hope to make it to.

Yesterday I was able to eat some soup, but I haven't had anything today. I was also able to take a shower yesterday which made me feel a little better and I'm going to go take one now. Then I'll probably take a nap and try to go to my evening class.

Thank goodness I have friends in my classes who will send me notes!

Health Care Rant

I was so excited that my health insurance costs were included in my cost of attendance, and therefore included in my federal loans. Well, as usual, I've been having trouble sleeping so I decided to make a doctor's appointment. It has turned into one hell of a day.

Health insurance through school cost about $1100 and covers me through August. My office visits are covered at a clinic that is about 1 mile from school. I should have known things weren't going to go well when I was put on hold for 10 minutes (!!!) when I tried to make the appointment in the first place. Luckily I made the appointment for 1pm today and not any later even though I don't have class until 4pm. I arrived at the clinic at 12:45 assuming that there would be some sort of paperwork even though nobody said that when I made the appointment. When I got there, they just had me sign in on a piece of paper. 25 minutes later (1:10pm for those of you keeping track) I get called to fill out the paperwork. The receptionist handed me a big stack of paperwork and told me to fill it out. I started to do that and then realized that most of the stack was about employment worker's comp type stuff. I went back up to ask her and she said I could skip all of that. Ok, so I handed in my paperwork at about 1:13.

1:45pm rolls around and I am finally called back to see the doctor. She seemed nice enough as I went into my explanation of my insomnia and how I've had it for as long as I can remember. She proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about whether or not I'm depressed and suicidal. I kept telling her no and explaining my medical history. She asked me 4 separate times if I was feeling suicidal. NO. I'M. NOT. She asked about all of the sleeping pills I have tried in the past and I told her. She then agreed to write me a prescription for 20 pills but if I wanted to get a refill I would have to meet with a psychiatrist. I told her ok and she wrote the prescription and I went on my not-so-merry way.

I walked down the street a few blocks to the CVS pharmacy that takes my student health insurance. When I get helped, the pharmacist says that my health insurance is valid but that it doesn't cover Ambien or the generic version of it. Frustrated, I asked how much it would cost to fill the prescription. He said 2 pills were $10.99. 2. Two. Two pills. The doctor told me she would write it for 20. 30 minutes later I walked out of the pharmacy with my 2 measly sleeping pills that I paid $5.50 each for.

So I haven't had a chance to call the doctor's office again to ask why the prescription was for 2 pills, but I don't know that it matters anyway. I can't afford to pay $5.50 for each pill. That is what my insurance was supposed to be for! The insurance said I have a $15 copay for generic medications, but that doesn't matter since its not covered.

What a crappy day. At least I'll get 2 nights of good sleep I guess.

The New Years Resolution

I guess it is now an appropriate time to share with you all what my New Years resolution was. Since I'm living in this wonderful new city with no shortage of things to do, I resolved to do one new NYC thing per week. This way I'm "forced" to get out and do new things and explore this awesome place and it will give me something to write about each week :-)

For my first full week in the apartment, my new things consisted of starting my new classes (most of which I really like), meeting people at school, learning to take the subway (actually going pretty well), and trying to figure out where things are (thank god for the iphone). Some highlights of my public transportation experience have been: a mariachi band performing in the subway car while it was moving, a woman on the bus preaching at me about god and religion, and a really gorgeous guy (seriously male model material) sitting across from me who I will probably never see again. Its a weird experience seeing so many people every day and knowing that I will never encounter them again.

My plan for this week's new thing is to go see an exhibit at the Pratt Manhattan Museum about green fashion. Its .4 miles from school so I'm planning to go see it before my 1 class on Wednesday evening. Best of all, its free!

Last night ended up being pretty fun as well. Most of the day was spent relaxing, except for a long experience trying to go to Target to get the final things I needed for my place. In the evening though, I hung out with Claire, her boyfriend, and his friends. Her boyfriend Charlie lives across the hall from us. He was going to have a boys night out with his friends so they were all at his place hanging out before going to the bar (people don't even leave for the bar until 11:30 around here because last call is at 4am!). Claire and I went over to hang out and have some wine with them for awhile. It was Charlie, his friend Lenny who I had already met, and his friends Dave and Ian who I had not met. It was great to meet some new people and hang out. I feel like we all got along really well and I immediately felt comfortable around all of them. Once they were ready to leave, Claire and I headed back to our side of the hall and ended up staying up talking until 1:30 in the morning. It was a great night. I really like living here!

Claire has 2 cats. Pepper is a 7 month old black kitty and he is so sweet. He'll pretty much let you do anything to him! He had a bath today though and it was too difficult to get a picture because he wouldn't hold still. This is Sparrow. She moved in the same day I did. She is 10 months old, but still so tiny!! We've become pretty good friends :-)

The Apartment

I promised pictures of where I am living, so here they are.

The apartment in general:

Close-up on the mural that Claire painted in the hallway:

These are from when I moved in:

These are after I've unpacked and started to decorate. There is still a way to go, but its feeling pretty homey now:

The desk was a grand total of $20 at Ikea. Gotta love that place.

This is the view out of one of my bedroom windows. Its so nice not to be on the street side of the building!

I still have some pictures to buy frames for and then I'll hang them. I'm also keeping my eyes open for a new rug. Claire is planning to paint the radiator bright red as a contrast. Claire and I were also thinking about doing something like this to the wall above my headboard. This is done with puzzle pieces painted gold. I'm thinking puzzle pieces painted silver would look nice with the paint color in my room.

Waiting for Class to Begin and a Quick Update

I'm waiting for my first class of the day to start so I thought I would post a quick update of what I've been up to.

I'm pretty much unpacked in my place, but I still need to get hangers to put the rest of my clothes away. Claire and I have been getting along great. I haven't really had a chance to explore Brooklyn yet, but its definitely something I hope to do this weekend.

Tuesday was a REALLY REALLY long day! I added Biotech & Pharmaceutical Patents last minute so I had a 9am class on Tuesday. I'm very happy I added the class though because it is really interesting material and the 2 professors are adjuncts who are partners in law firms around here. They will be good contacts and said they would help us with anything, including employment stuff. After that, I had a long break until 2:30. I spent a fair amount of time in the library trying to finish the 120 pages of reading that I had for my 4pm class. Then I went to the cafeteria and totally felt like the new student in the middle school cafeteria. Everyone was really absorbed in their groups so I sat by myself just surfing the internet. Oh well. At 2:30 I had Cyberlaw. The professor seems to be great and this class will also be really interesting.

After Cyberlaw I went to Antitrust. I'm less excited about this class and thinking about dropping it. The professor is somewhat intimidating and he assigns a ton of reading. I'm currently signed up for 16 credits, including antitrust, which is the maximum amount of credits I'm allowed to take. Unfortunately at the end of class, he called out a few names (mine included) and asked if we would be in class on Monday. That means we are on call for the readings. I didn't want to tell him that I was thinking of dropping it, so I said I would be there on Monday and prepared to discuss the reading. Luckily I have until Tuesday night to drop a class, so I'll give it 1 more chance on Monday and then drop it if I don't like it.

After all of that, I still had International Copyright at 6pm on Tuesday. The professor is pretty interesting and entertaining, but the reading assignments look like they'll be pretty boring. Just reading statutes and very few cases. I finally got to leave school at 8pm. I left my house at 7:45am and didn't get home until 9pm. Super long day! I rewarded myself with Thai takeout, which made everything a little better.

Yesterday was pretty good. I got into 2 classes that I had been waitlisted for. Yesterday I only had one class, IP Business Transactions. Its going to be a great class but the professor was really boring and repetitive. He kept saying the same things over and over, particularly things he would start to say and then say, "but more on that later." The class will be good though because it covers exactly what I want to do in practice.

Class is about to start, so I'll cut this off now. I promise to post pictures of my room and the cats this weekend!