if these people made it through law school, so can i. oh, and i'm getting old. like really old.

the following people actually went to law school and subsequently passed the bar.  scary, i know.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor , isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep , he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son , the 20-year-old , how old is he?
WITNESS: He's 20 , much like your IQ.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shi**ing me?
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death..
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them.. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral , OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral...
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not , he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

i died laughing reading this and i died laughing posting it.  in other good news, i am stressed beyond anything i ever thought possible.  and i'm pretty sure law school is making me irrational and crazy.  and forgetful.  well, i was crazy before, now i'm CUHRAZZZY.  i keep putting the orange juice back in the cabinet where my glasses go. and the other day i microwaved my car keys instead of my green tea.  oh, and i still haven't shaved my legs.  i think my body feels sorry for me because my leg hair hasn't even grown back yet since i got them waxed.

also, i will be a quarter of a century come monday, the 15th.  (un)fortunately, my very happy birthday comes smack dab in the middle of writing my final legal memorandum as well as studying for finals.  yuck.  hugs and kisses, lovers.

law school = hairy legs, lots of sugar, and charlie is back

first year of law school forces you to neglect a variety of things.  things you once held sacred and dear are taken over by the blob that is law school.

to give you an idea of how i'm doing (although i'm sure 97% of you don't care, i'm just narcissistic and am going to pretend that you do), i'm going to tell you a little bit about myself these days:

- i've stopped shaving my legs.  it takes time and i'm lazy.  so my vietnamese bff, ann, at my nail salon waxes them while i sit there and read contracts.  she talks the entire time, too.  as if her talking is going to distract me from ripping hair from my legs.

- my diet consists solely of sugar cookies and sweet potatoes.  please don't be like my doctor and judge.  she's convinced i'm going to turn myself into a diabetic before too long.  i like sugar and i like sweet.  what can i say.

- lest you have forgotten about charlie, he's baaaaaaaaaack!!!  i see him almost nightly now, and he has been in a MOOD lately.  for those of you who have forgotten charlie, or who didn't have the great pleasure of reading about charlie, here he is in all his pride and glory:

i've told him if he hasn't stopped scaring the bejeebies out of me, i'm going to turn him into one of these:

love and miss you all like a barnacle loves being on a humpback whale.

hugs and kisses.

things i do instead of studying: if facebook existed long ago...

i'm a hairless cow. or that's what google told me.

hokay, so here's the deal.  i just finished week deux of law school (law school is also know as - i'm going to not only take all of your money, but i am going to deprive you of any and all sleep, make you carry 4.36 million pound case books, stand up in class and recite one of the 7.83 million cases i assigned you the night before all while making you develop a stomach ulcer and hair loss due to stress). 

i'm essentially going to school six days a week, thanks to these "highly recommended/basically mandatory" saturday seminars.  let's just say i've gone from having a very limited life to a non-existent life.  my limited human interaction involves teaching my 11th grade girls sunday school class sunday mornings.  (p.s. do any of y'all have 16-17 year old girls or know any 16-17 year old girls?  they are hysterical.  and chatty.  like even more chatty than i get when i ramble on to you guys in my post.  i've been blessed with a great group of about ten girls this school year, so i'm excited to see how the year goes.)

i guess i can't say it's all bad, though.  i'm really, really loving the actual content of what i'm learning and how to actually apply the law.  my passion for the law and and understanding it has only increased, so thank sweet Jesus i'm good at identifying my own interests.  you'd be shocked to know, quite a few people start law school and quit after the first week or semester saying, "this crap wasn't what i signed up for."  it's intense, suffice it to say.

that being said, i miss you all like cuhrazy.  i'll try to make the rounds when i can and i hope everyone is doing well.

let me leave you with this - when i typed in the word "stress" in google images, this is what i came up with.  weird.  i think google is trying to tell me something, and i'd be stupid not to listen since google and wikipedia are pretty much geniuses and right all the time.

i feel google may be predicting what i'm going to look like by the end of the year - a cow with no hair.

paying $100,000 to read, write, and not sleep. excellent choice.

at the request of hotpantsTM, i'm interrupting my regularly scheduled case briefing and reading to bring you this blog post.  brief as it may be, it's still a post (with pictures, mind you) nonetheless.*

so here's the deal: my life is cuh-razy and i am bizzzay (that's crazy and busy, just in case you had trouble discerning my dirty street lingo).  let me break it down like this - i recently posted this on surferwoman's facebook wall:

yes, i already know - there is a disgusting typo in there.  the word "about" is supposed to be "AMOUNT" as in "amount of reading."  gahhh, i'm a failure.

so that's it in a grammatically incorrect facebook post - i've been ridic busy reading my life away.  kind of weird that i'm paying over $100,000 to read for hours on end (somehow have to remember and apply, more importantly, all of it).

and just because i know how much all of you freaky voyeurs like pictures, here's my desk - in shambles and unorganized omg:

and this is what bailey does while i study:

see, so there you have it, i'm a busy busy bee!  a busy bee who misses and loves all of you and will definitely make the rounds to read your blogs and catch up in y'all's lives in my "spare" time!

in other news, i start teaching 11th grade girls sunday school tomorrow which i'm super stoked about!  and quasi has an MMA fight tonight in vegas.  i'm a littttle nervous to say the least.  i'll let you know how it all goes down.  i'm bummed i couldn't be there to watch and support him, but mandatory law school orientation kind of cramped my style.

*have you ever thought it's weird that "nonetheless" is all one word?  i mean really, it's three separate words in one to build one mega run-on word.  weird.  or maybe not.

while my birthday is still four months away...

...i already know what i want:

omg i'm freaking in love.

p.s. it's a hedgehog, not a porcupine. 
and i've unofficially named him trevor.  trevor the hedgehog.

changing - fearing not: out of egypt - into the promised land

i need to share my heart today.  it's raw, it's real, and it's unedited.

i wrote this note on facebook back in march 2007... now three years and three months later, i found myself writing out the same thoughts in my journal last night.  they are seem to be so applicable and true to where i am at in life right now.  funny how life is often cyclical like that.

change: 1. to make the form, nature, content, future course of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone; 2. to transform or convert

initially, i found 38 working definitions of the word change. i assume, though, that the first two are most applicable here, particularly the second.

many cringe at the word change, fearing it simply because, in most cases, we don't always know what that change might bring... we don't always want to deal with the repercussions and circumstances that will follow... we don't know if we're equipped to handle the new life that change will inevitably bring. or in some cases, we've grown comfortable in our lives and fear that change will severely jolt that sense of contentment and comfortable-ness.

while i don't necessarily shudder at the thought of change, i don't always embrace it with open arms simply because i'm not always ready for it... particularly the change that God is calling me to right now... He has been wrestling with my heart calling me back to Him... calling all of me, not just the pieces i've been giving Him. He wants more than the half-hearted prayers and half-hearted devotion and praise that i've been giving.

He's calling me to a complete and total transformation and conversion of my heart and mind... and to be honest, it's scary. complete and total trust. jumping in with both feet. leaving egypt and crossing the jordan river to the promised land. God doesn't want me to go back to egypt; and quite honestly, neither do i.  but what is it about egypt i want?  is it the predictability?  is it the "comfort" of the "known" even if that reality wasn't good?  or is it just the fact that the promised land is much to difficult for my mind to grasp and therefore scares the living you-know-what out of me?!

egypt: it's comfortable; day in and day out, we know it will always be the same, and for some strange reason, we find a twisted sense of comfort in that. it's because we're scared and we're living in fear rather than being patient and waiting on the Lord and fully trusting that He has an amazing will for our lives. i say i trust God with my mouth, but if i fully trusted Him i wouldn't still be wandering in the wilderness relying on myself to get me the heck out of here. it's because we do not fully grasp that Christ's sacrificial love has truly set us free. free from sin, free from shame and doubt, free from slavery. 

my prayer is that God rids me of myself.  my selfish wants and desires - and replaces them with things that only HE desires to HIS purpose and kingdom.  it's a painful process; particularly when we're fighting it.  the phrase "letting go and letting God" seems so easy and simple.  but for me, it's quite possibly one of the hardest things for me to do.  i feel like a hypocrite saying with my lips, "Lord, i trust you," yet my actions and fleshly feelings are looking back to egypt.  i kind of feel like i'm sitting on the border of egypt and the promise land - one foot in each, waiting to take that first step.  and i will; i know i will.  

trust and complete obedience. i have grown fairly content with my half-hearted little life... i haven't been happy, but i haven't been sad either... i've just kind of existed doing nothing for the kingdom of God... doing nothing for my Lord who i profess to have given my life to... which now just seems to be that i have only been giving Him pieces of me. and i hate that. i hate it more than anything. God doesn't deserve my leftovers... He doesn't deserve the half-hearted worship i've been giving Him... so right now, He is calling me to change... calling me to a transformation of heart and soul and a committed spirit to Him. to no longer fear what i do not know or understand... to quit my sins of omission and dedicate my life to Him alone.

there is no fear in love. but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. the one who fears is not made perfect in love. -1 john 4:18

i am neither fearless nor fearful. i am simply "fearing not" for He is my God.

the most important tidbit of news you will hear all week

go read and watch this now.

and then come back and tell me what you're going to do about it.

you would know what this was if you went to the link i told you to go to.  follow instructions.

fashion, facial hair, and frail "beauty"

alright ladies (and the few select awesome men who read my shenanigans), we need to have a chat.  a chat about fashion, facial hair (specifically facial hair on women), and what our culture views as beauty.  

here's the thing, i realize that the human body is 100% covered in a fine, thin layer of hair.  i get that.  and most women either wax, thread, pluck, or bleach their eyebrows and lips.  it's normal, it's natural, and it's nothing to be ashamed of.  THIS, however, is a little different...

am i the only one who finds this both something disturbing and disgusting, not to mention itchy?

is she carrying a plate?

this has nothing to do with facial hair because i am less concerned about the woman (yes, that is a woman) walking down the center of the runway and more concerned about the chick in the red shorts on the left-hand side of the runway.  she looks starving and very ill.  maybe i'm missing the point of "fashion" and the "beauty" of looking like skeletor; but i am sickened that our society and fashion world often views bones and skin as beauty and fashionable.  yes, i realize that many men and women are naturally very thin - God created us all different with a specific purpose in mind; but no human being is naturally bone thin.

what do you think?

and here's the mastermind behind it all - patrick mohr.  mohr is known for his strange selection of models, often choosing homeless people off the streets to create his vision, for example.

there are two things i would say to this guy:

1. patrick, i get that you're an artist.  or a fashion designer.  or whatever.  i get that your into androgyny.  i get that you want to be unique and different and and push the envelope in order to create "art."  to that i say, that's cool.  your "art" most definitely isn't my thing, but to each their own.  you probably don't like the fact that i love to shave my legs.  we can agree to disagree and still live in harmony.  i like that your living your dream.

2. while the facial hair is beyond disgusting and androgyny isn't really my thing because i love actually looking like a woman, what concerns me most is that 90% of your models look sick.  like near death, frail, malnourished sick.  like the kind of sick where they should be in a hospital getting treatment, not on a runway parading their skeleton around as something of beauty.  just my two cents.

you can check it all out here.

remember when i was gone for so long? well, this is where i was: camp in photographic review.

i had over 200 pictures from the week at camp, but i'll spare you and just put some of them.  the week was absolutely amazing, and i'm already counting down the days when i get to go back!!

camp eagle on the nueces river in the texas hill country

"acquire the tire" = a sort of wrestle tog-of-war game that consists of mud, rocks, mayonnaise, syrup, chocolate sauce, powdered sugar, bbq sauce, pickle relish, baked beans, fruit loops, ranch dressing, and lots of battle wounds.  it's way dirty and way disgusting.

(lil bro's on the left)

it took a few days for my campers to actually realize i was their adult sponsor.  key word there being adult.

rec time with my clan!  we dominated, if you can believe that.  it may or may not have been because i threatened them that i would make them run during their free time if we lost. 

that is the face of determination and victory at the annual 'saints and sinners' softball game.  (a.k.a. sponsors vs. seniors)  we killed them, by the way.

my clan: the village of capernaum, hole in the roof gang

yes, that is a tight rope tied between two trees.  no, i was not very good.  three steps was the best i could do.

little bro and me.

little brudder's last year at camp as a camper.

getting ready to do the BLOB!

senior celebration the last night.

the pictures don't really do the week justice.  let's just say it was one of the most amazing weeks of my life and since then, my life has truly been different and i'm so grateful that i was able to go.

happy monday everyone!  it's gonna be ridiculously busy from here on out for me.  wrapping up a series of projects at work and interviewing candidates for my position.