And next: THE WORLD!

I've tried, I've tried to calm down, but it just ain't happening. You know why? Do you know why I'm so excited??

I BOUGHT MY TICKET TO INDIA!

As my good friend Adrian would put it, "this is like awesome star debris coming together." So yes, as you may know, I originally intended to go in September. When I emailed a couple of my friends who've been to India with some questions, one of them replied and I realized that yes, oh YES I would be moving my plans to December. Why?

Chai is getting married! In December! In India!!

You'll have to forgive me, much like the past few hours, this post will be filled with lots of yelling and freaking out. The good kind. So I started thinking about December, and pretty soon my friends who've traveled to India started telling me, "Listen, if you're going, you need to buy your ticket like, yesterday." I started looking with fervor, though I was still a little nervous about the whole idea. I really wanted to do it, but in the back of my head I still thought it would end up never happening.

Today, I called some useless travel agents and broken phone lines and saw some horrendously expensive flights on Expedia and Travelocity. And spent most of the day emailing back and forth with Chai and my real-life-friend-and-blog-lurker Arish (Hi Arish!), both of whom were a great help.

Then Chai comes out with icing. It was just the other day that I was feeling nostalgic for the old blog circle we had last summer studying for the bar. Yeah, studying was awful, but I met a phenomenal group of people and we blogged and quickly became friends and circled the wagons when we needed and they were, studying aside, good times. (A few disappeared after we got our results - JM, I hope you're alive out there!) So while I was sitting in my office, still jittery about booking my flight, Chai says, "I'm pretty sure Roonie and Maisnon are coming!" For serious?! We're getting the old barzam (yeah, I said it) group back together? In India?? For your wedding??? This is getting downright surreal.

I feel bad for missing the DCist happy hour today, but this is why: I came straight home and got on IM with Chai and Roonie, found the perfect flight, and while they hooted and hollered - I bought it! I leave Dulles on December 20, fly to Heathrow, and land in Bangalore very early on December 22. Chai and her mother are picking me up from the airport and I'm probably going to stay with the (blogger) girls and a few of Chai's fiance's friends in a furnished house her grandmother owns near the wedding site.

And here's where Chai starts to get me really excited: She's going to take us sari shopping! We'll get them professionally fitted and get all henna-d up for the festivities, which start the 25th and culminate with the wedding on the 27th. Dancing and music and food and w00t!

!!

Then on the 28th, I'll go with Chai's group to spend New Year's Eve on the beaches of Goa. I can Hardly. Stand. It. Goa had a permanent place on my list way back when India was just a pipe-dream in my little imagination. And now I get to usher in the New Year there, on the other side of the world? Someone pinch me.

No, don't!

After the New Year, I'll take off on my own, and that part is still up in the air. I'll likely visit some touristy sites like the Taj Mahal, etc, but I'm going to have to do some serious research. Ask my mother, I know everything about a place before I travel there. I think it's just my way of traveling before I actually get to travel. Mom joked that I was her private tour guide in Greece, since I was attached to my giant guide book and gave her a 1000 year history lesson on every artifact we saw, knew exactly what neighborhood we were in, where all the good restaurants were, and had practically memorized a map of southern Greece weeks before we got on a plane. (It's actually safe to say that I know many international cities ten times better than I know the one I live in.) I'm buying a big book on India tomorrow!!

Friends tell me domestic flights are cheap, so that will likely be my primary mode of transportation. In South America it was the only way to travel because it was so cheap and it was usually just too far to take the train, so I'm hoping it will work the same in India.

So many more details to talk about, but I'll stop now. I still have things to edit and write and, you know, many miles before I sleep and all that. Not that I'll sleep!

You blinked.

Believe it or not, folks, I'm officially taking over today as Arts Editor for DCist. I know! My esteemed colleague Sommer, the former Arts Editor, moved her way up the ladder to Co-Editor-in-Chief, which left an opening for me to sneak into before anyone realized what was happening. Surely once they notice I've taken up residence in the editorial foxhole, someone will come smoke me out. But until then: Look out DC Arts World, you're mine now.

Bar Exam Advice

I promised you googling bar exam takers that I'd give you some links to my posts from last year concerning my summer of study. I'd say something like, "not that you care," but clearly many of you do, and probably need hours of fodder for procrastinating, so here you go:

How To Make Friends In Bar/Bri By Libeling Them On The Internet (read the comments, too)

Law Students Are Annoying

How To Pass the Bar by Buying Shit

Obviously, You're An Idiot

Clearly, I Should Have Freaked Out About The Job Thing More

Murder-Inducing Coldstone's Employees

Nihilism and the Bar

Why Bar/Bri? Not This

(One of the many installments of) CalBar: Douchebags of Uselessness

The Simulated MBE and the Open Mines Doctrine

What To Eat While Studying for the Bar

Chill the Fuck Out Already

Early Lawyering, or, What to Do If You're Suing Someone While Studying for the Bar

Sidenote: Strangers who Hit On Me

Blogging and Bar Studying

Surely An Asshole Like You Can Pass

Casualties of War

Dealing With Avian Flu

Freaking Out Helps No One

Okay, I'm Freaking Out

What to Bring to the Exam

There's another ton of posts concerning waiting for the results, but that's a whole different world of pain. FYI - Almost everyone on my sidebar there (which I haven't updated in forever) took the bar with me, so feel free to browse. Enjoy, and good luck!

Good. I really needed a new internet obsession.

I knew, I just knew that once I started helping put up Photo of the Day over at DCist, I'd end up searching through Flickr photos all the time, whether or not I needed one for the site. I've used Flickr for almost a year now, and even bought a Pro account because I uploaded so much, but I've sort of avoided using it for any kind of serious photo work. I never really browsed through other photos or joined all these crazy groups popping up, but now I'm done-for. First, I just searched through the 'dcist' tagged photos, then random people started adding me as a contact after I'd use their photo, so I started browsing their photos and it became a link-bonaza to other people and other groups of fantastic photos. I gotta say, there are some damn fine photographers using Flickr.

Finally last night I went crazy. I signed up for about thirty 'groups' like "All Things Nature" and "Ventura County." The irony being that I use Flickr almost strictly for crappy images to use on my blog. The thought of someone seeing my name on the member list for "Landscapes" and going through my photostream to find shitty pictures of ice cream in my freezer and poorly focused shots of my marigolds kind of cracks me up. I do have a few nice photos that I submitted to groups last night, and I have a feeling that this is going to make me go out there and start really using my camera again. I've really not taken advantage of the fact that I have a whole yard full of plants to practice on, and I was thinking I'm definitly going to take practicing photography into consideration when I put together the garden next year.

Yikes, I think lightning just struck my front yard. Satellite's down, DSL just went down (saving in draft, check). Someone's telling me to go read a book.

P.S. I planned on doing some posts with them, but for now, my California photos are here, and some photos from the Smithsonian opening (though many of these are really bad) are here.