times that try men's souls. . .

our '86 audi began to act up on the way home from wisconsin. we were up there for sarah's grandmother's funeral and the car problems just seemed to conclude a very bad week for us. we pulled it together and still plan on having our cookout and hosting abby & jon this weekend.

Lillie M. Lehto (1915-2005)

sarah's grandmother, lillie lehto, passed away on monday. she will be dearly missed.

south carolina trip

with finals over, sarah and i headed down south for a little r&r. we went to visit one of her oldest friends from high school, nickki. click on the link below for pictures of our trip down south.

south carolina trip

the end and the start. . .

whew. finals over. now the waiting for grades to come rolling in. if all goes well john marshall we get the rest of the my $$ for one more year. there's just an enormous sense of satisfaction and release when finals ends. and even though my head is trying to repress thinking about things like "piercing the corporate veil" and violations of SEC rule 10.5(b) i got a real kick out of this past week onion article on corporate scandal. and no you don't have to have taken corporations in law school to get most of these jokes.

now that i have some time i can catch up on updating the blog on a more regular basis and the old website too. i just had a job interview today and more lined up for next week. gainful employment and more importantly legal work experience is just ahead in my future. but summer is more than just work its relaxing with friends and catching up on other non-law stuff. cookouts, street festivals, beer gardens, blues fest, jazz fest, golfing, cubs games, biking around the lake, and trips to see family. its shaping up to be a very busy but very fun summer.

the early summer reading list:

ethan watters - urban tribes
michael dyson - mercy mercy me
seymour hersh - chain of command

over spring break i read joseph ellis' biography, george washington and i highly recommend it. in july sarah and i will fight over the new harry potter book . read some of the same books with me this summer and we'll talk literary stuff.

let's see what else is going on? the cubs seem to be slowly getting it together. i don't know what derek lee is drinking, but whatever it is i hope he passes it around the rest of the clubhouse.

in politics the filibuster/nuclear (how do you pronounce that gw?) option battle rages. meanwhile journalism is going through another self inflicted "crisis" as newsweek is retracting a story about koran desecration. i'm not defending newsweek for getting a story wrong. but the hubris of republican outrage begs the question, if a journalist shouldn't rely on one source for a news story how the hell can you rely on one source (ahmed chalabi) to validate inaccurate claims about wmd? doubtless someone at newsweek we'll be held accountable for this error as was the case in dan rather and memogate. but puh-lease -- the scorecard again on accountability.

scott mcclellan keeps insisting that newsweek needs "to do more" than apologize. what more could this administration possibly want than the overall free pass their getting from the media. sean hannity to be named editor? a promise not to question the president's social security plan? armstrong williams-like stories -- for free!

sigh. as a bumper sticker i saw succintly put it: "if you're not mad, you're just not paying attention."

well that's the end of this long post. oh one more thing. i just gotta rave about my bob dylan phase i'm going through. every now and then a cd really gets to you and you can't stop playing it. i went through a period where i only listened to one album on repeat for weeks at a time. (coltrane-love supreme, buckley-grace, gaye-what's going on, springsteen-nebraska, stones-exile on main street) but blood on the tracks is the cd (or mp3s) looping on my ipod these days. man, that's some powerful stuff. do yourself a favor and check out "shelter from the storm". more blogging for y'all later. peace.

FINALS COUNTDOWN. . .

days until finals are over. . .

FINALS!!

and bearing down on me like a 747 in the rear view mirror its finals time again. as noted in previous posts [year one, last time] when this time of year rolls around the posting slows to a trickle.

i have four finals this year. the first one on the 5th and the my last one on the 17th. and if that wasn't enough i got a big job interview on the 4th. i'll be really glad when this spring quarter truly ends.