Trash Man and Law School

Just moved to the new apartment, and by new I mean old. The building is a near exact copy of the one I lived in last year, which is pretty eerie and results in my trying to sit in chairs that aren't there any more and look for stuff I need in the places in which they used to be located last year.

The timing of the move was incredibly lucky - I moved into an apartment with air conditioning as soon as this 100 degree heat wave swept across LA, overwhelming deodorants and antiperspirants and generally sapping all of the will to move or live. I'm liking this place so far, except for one thing - the 7am garbage man wakeup call.

Every morning around 7am, I wake up, and for a brief confused moment, I am utterly convinced that I'm tied to the wing of a Boeing 747. Understand that this isn't a nice, short series of clangs or engine noises. It's so loud it's like having your ear pressed to the engine of an 18 wheeler, while it's exploding. This racket lasts so long that I'm beginning to suspect that the garbage man is some sort of sadistic insomniac who hates the mere idea of sleep. I imagine him with bloodshot eyes, earplugs, and teeth bared in a triumphant grin .

Make no mistake, I'm not some princess who wakes up if he can hear the sound of a fly landing on a pillow. I can sleep through earthquakes, fires, and more often, the last call for my flight at the airport. I have all of the vital signs of a rotting log when I'm asleep. But this is 20 car pileup noise for at least 20 minutes. What can he be doing? How many dumpsters are there? This is literally the only explanation I can provide for the unholy cacophony of noises I hear:

The garbage man arrives that the pick up point with a broken muffler, replaced by what sounds like a pane of aluminum siding and garbage can lids. Alas, the mechanism for lifting the dumpster and overturning the refuse has failed. He is not a sensible man, but he is quite imaginative and resourceful, and decides to hammer a metal plate to the front of the vehicle to act as a ramp to flip objects in it's path, like he saw on a rerun of Robot Warz last night on G4tech tv. The possibility that he achieves the exact combination of speed and force necessary to send the dumpster on the precise trajectory that would flip the refuse into the truck is minuscule, but this garbage man is a determined man and tries anyway, clanging a spoon against a pot and shooting off a 12 gauge rifle to drum up his courage. For 20 minutes, he rams the dumpster repeatedly and fruitlessly. Finally, realizing that he was simply pressing the wrong button, he detaches the metal ramp, dragging it on the sidewalk, where it clashes with the littered shrapnel from the destroyed dumpster, and takes the trash away the normal way.

It doesn't help my morning mood much, and I already have an insanely angry morning mood. If you see me glaring at a truck in the AM, it's not because I'm pissed about something in general or because I'm grumpy. It's because I want to kill that fucking truck for being so fucking loud. Seriously, stay away from me before 10am unless I've had coffee.

Anyways, I've been thinking about going to law school, thanks to a conversation with my internship director who holds roughly 5 degrees and says that law school is the most useful and fulfilling. I don't know what she could have said to me, because I've always said that I would hate law school and hate being a lawyer. My friends, family, and anonymous readers, it's now your job to convince me not to go to law school.