Tapirtype Blog

Today I was walking down Beacon Street, and something was amiss. I looked up as I passed a storefront, and lo and behold, the Kosher Dunkin Donuts was gone. A sign said it had closed permanently. Patrons were advised to visit their other location on Boylston Street, but where will the neighborhood turkeys go for their morning pastry? It is a sad day for the town of Brookline.

Addendum: This void now creates the longest distance between Dunkin Donuts franchise locations in entire Greater Boston area: a full 1.7 miles. How will Brookline survive? Only time will tell.

This morning, as I was waiting for the T, I saw a turkey. It was scrounging around the plants in the islands that run down the center of Beacon Street, right next to the trolley stop like it was waiting for a train to arrive.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but it was right there, about three feet away from me.

A Russian guy started throwing it bread crumbs. I asked, "Is that your turkey?" He said, "No, it is just hun-ga-ry!" I really, really wanted to reply, "No, it's not Hungary, it's Turkey!"

It's always interesting - and usually frustrating - to watch and listen to the other visitors at the zoo. There's always someone else there who really appreciates the experience and wants to learn more about the animals, but it seems like for every visitor who takes that attitude, there are a dozen more who, really, all you can think is, "Explain to me again why you paid the admission fee?"

Yesterday, we went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, to see the BRAND NEW BABY TAPIR!

Once upon a time, there was this.

I finally bulked up this article I started on Wikipedia about a constitutional law case I think is interesting!

I don't think I was always this big a nerd... Or am I just fooling myself? Do I get any cred for having written a lot of this article too?

Answer: No. No I don't.

I had a dream last night about flesh-eating zombies, and it was still better than the dream I had the night before, which was about my Crim exam.

I've had a marathon week of reading Supreme Court cases about reproductive rights - which really doesn't differ that much from my normal repertoire of reading, except that this time it was for class so I was taking lots of notes. My assignments included Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The great thing about spring is that there are tons of baby tapirs on the loose! Probably not on the loose, actually - just at zoos. The one below is Vasan, who was born at the Edinburgh Zoo last month.

We are not dealing.

I was knitting on the T this afternoon, and two big jock frat boys got on and sat across the aisle from me. They saw me knitting.

That's about it. Happy Groundhog Day!

So, I was getting a mocha at Athan's this morning, and a guy from the hardware store across the street came in. He was watching the barrista make the mocha.

Guy: So what is that, some kind of chocolate espresso?

Barrista: It's a mocha!

Guy: Hmmm!

Barrista: It's milk and coffee and chocolate syrup.

Guy: You can't go wrong with chocolate syrup, I guess.

Barrista: You know what Andrew gets? One of these but with strawberry syrup.

Guy: I should really fire him.

Barrista: Yeah. But you know what? My boyfriend gets the same thing. But he thinks it sounds too girly, so he doesn't call it a strawberry latte... He calls it a "Super Coffee."

So about 45,000 of the opinions they have you read as a first year law student are by this judge named Learned Hand, who had a cousin - also an influential judge - named Augustus Noble Hand. Learned was also friends with J. D. Salinger, apparently, which I guess would make him about the one dude that Salinger would talk to.

I did read a decision for Property last night that wasn't by Learned Hand, though - it was by Proctor Hug, Jr. It's like a Care Bear mated with the cast of The Crucible. And it makes me happy.

One thing that's fun about riding the T in Boston right now is that a lot of the trains have ads for Glacieau Vitamin Water featuring David Ortiz, the Red Sox first baseman/designated hitter also known as Big Papi. Some of the ads proclaim of Vitamin Water, "It works. For David Ortiz." And who can argue against evidence like that? Other ads ask "Who's your papi?" and some of them say "From underdog to big dog papi." This makes me extremely happy because it reminds me of my little cousin Jack, who is four. Last time I visited him, I started calling him Little Papi, to which he would respond with his voice cracking, "He-ey! Why you call me Papi?!?" He and his sister Lydia thought this routine was all kinds of hilarious, and while sitting at the dinner table, Lydia would whisper to Jack that he was Little Papi, and then Jack would whirl around to me and cackle, "YoucallmePapi!" So it makes me happy to see Big Papi on the T. This does not, however, change the fact that we must abolish the DH.

I just got back from my first day of orientation. It went very well - yay! I met a lot of nice people, and all the professors seem just ridiculously cool. When they were introducing themselves to everybody, I felt like I should wave a lighter around from the desk.

Around here, my mom has a reputation as being the go-to person when you have a problem with wildlife, and when I'm around, I often get roped into it. I have a very specific specialty, though. My specialty is toilet rats.

We finally saw an ad for it last night, and... wow. The commercial alone exceeded all my wildest expectations. I mean, there are snakes, and they're on a plane. That's a movie.

The word "freckle" comes from an old Scandinavian word for... freckle.

The more you say "freckle" over and over, the funnier it sounds. This was probably true for the Vikings as well, which may be why there weren't many Viking warriors named Ragnar the Freckled.

So I'm going to be heading to Boston in a few weeks, and that's making me feel all sentimental. Well, actually, it's also that I'm tipsy on gin and tonic and watching The Daily Show. It's good times. So for whatever reason, I felt like making a list of stuff that I like about Seattle. Hipsters around here make a big thing of being all down on Seattle, and it irritates the hell out of me, because I like this city. So here's my list, in no particular order.