Another exciting Sunday . . . photos of dogs and a master bathroom

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Cool video.

This video explains the anatomy of a home run, from a physics perspective:



Via Susan at "Kiss My Big Blue Butt," a lady in the true style of Ann Richards, Molly Ivins and those who love them.

Zoo Visit!

More pictures here.

Things I miss about home

1. corn fields stretching as far as the eye can see
2. quiet, cool basements
3. nice Midwestern people with funny accents
   
4. a slower pace, a simpler life
5. knowing the back roads like the back of my hand
6. spending time with people who have known me for my entire life
7. being able to identify which family lived in every house on my street
8. exploring out of sight corners of my little town
9. the old library that was my home away from home
10. Tastee Treet soft-serve ice cream cones

It probably isn't a sign of success

when a person drives home from work on a Friday night, tears streaming down her face, because she cannot think of a way to kill herself that will not endanger her dogs or cause others to experience pain.

Past that now. But desperate to find some way to be happy. Sooner rather than later.

Happy Fourth of July!

I am feeling a bit wordless at the moment, so I'll leave you with these quick thoughts:

Here is a funny little combination of patriotism and baseball.

You've got to love Josh Marshall's quote, "Paris Hilton did more time than Scooter Libby." Do you feel grateful on this most patriotic of national holidays for the freedom of privileged white men, especially those who perjure themselves, in light of Scooter Libby's commutation of his prison sentence and, possibly, of his supervised release as well?

Have you noticed that the Chicago Cubs have now won 9 of their last 10 games? Go, Cubs!

Happy 11th Birthday, my little Kip!

Searching one's soul

Something happened last night that caused me to slow down and think. I can't talk about the specifics, but they probably are not that important anyway.

What is important is that before searching my soul, I had to locate it. I have never felt more out of touch with who I really am. I have never felt more out of control of my life. I have never felt more strongly that I must stop doing things that sabotage my effectiveness, happiness and well-being. Unbelievably, one aspect of last night's situation--running unexpectedly and improbably into an old friend who helped to make it so much better than it otherwise would have been--even made me seriously rethink my agnosticism. Miracles certainly will never cease.

I am not writing this so you all, kind-hearted people you are, can tell me not to be so hard on myself. In fact, I agree with you. One way to be less hard on myself is to stop doing things, or not doing things, that directly cause my life to be harder.

I spent all of today sleeping, thinking and freshening the one bit of the world I felt I had control over today: my bedroom/bathroom. I feel the need to slow down and do one thing at a time, think carefully and be true to myself. I will try very hard to do that during the busy work week, which is much harder than on a lazy, rainy Sunday.



Flower at Seattle's Volunteer Park Conservatory, by me, June 2007.

Oddities

I learned tonight that the reason my "Love Actually" CD won't play in my car is that I had the soundtrack and movie discs mixed up--I've been trying to play a movie in the car's CD player.

Friday night, I attending the Ben Folds/John Mayer concert with a friend (she procured our tickets from what turned out to be a 15 year old John Mayer Fan Club member whose grandmother drove him to the ticket/money exchange point, a Barnes and Noble). The combination of our semi-late arrival (near the end of Ben Folds' warmup act), Shiner Bock beer drinking, swooning over JM and blaring of a John Mayer CD in my top-down car while waiting for parking lot traffic to clear out afterward all added up to me feeling about 20 years younger. I'll let you decide if that was a good thing or not. It felt good to me!

As did the Cubs' sweep of the Chicago White Sox this weekend. Always a good thing!

In sad baseball news, Rod Beck, who is a part of Cubs pitching lore, died this weekend at age 38. I last saw him when he threw out the first pitch and sang "Take me out to the ballgame" at the Cubs/Giants game on my birthday last year. His untimely death is sad, as he was by all accounts not just a great baseball player, but also a great human being.



Downtown Dallas Sky, Last week, by Me

Sorry, I forgot to tell you.

In addition to fulfilling the duties of my full-time job and my civil rights volunteer work, this week I am very busy with a second job of attending Chicago Cubs baseball games. Yes, the Cubs are playing in Dallas, for the first time ever!

And I have had a glimpse of what my life would be like if I lived in Chicago and attended a Cubs game each and every day they were in town. Except that in Chicago I could take public transportation to the very handy ballpark, while in Dallas, I have to allow at least an hour to travel to the game via a soul-sucking, packed and slow highway.

My dinner for two nights running has consisted of a hot dog and peanuts. So far, the Cubs have won one game and lost the other, and I witnessed history last night when Sammy Sosa hit his 600th home run.

The third and final game is this afternoon. I have a million and two pictures to post for you, of the Cubs and Seattle and even going back to my May trip to New York. Soon, my friends, soon!

Seattle Skyline, From Boat

Mount Rainier, from Airplane

Loving Seattle so far . . . more words and pictures soon!

Freddie Visits Per Se

I am enjoying playing with my new Adobe Photoshop program. This is an example of the "watercolor" function.

Soon I will have a link ready so you can see other photos from my May trip to New York. I figured it was about time, as I leave this week for another trip, this one to Seattle.

Until then, check out Nina's fabulous pictures and excellent writing about Norway. (Via Althouse)

Panic

Tonight I am experiencing a full-blown case of panic. It is a non-specific panic, so I do not know the exact cause of it. I'm going to lean on my experience, which tells me things always look better in the morning. Here's hoping it is true!

A Reminder

I've been feeling pretty down on myself lately, mostly due to the aforementioned malaise that prevented me from accomplishing much over the last few weeks. But some nice things have happened recently. They serve as small but powerful reminders of why I do what I do.

Perhaps my favorite was last week, when a client for whom I fought long and hard in an intense business dispute, ultimately obtaining a very favorable result, called to tell me he has sold his business. It was bittersweet news: this was his family's business and the only career he has ever known. This client is among the nicest I have ever known . . . he is both kind-hearted and an excellent businessman, and unusual combination. Anyway, I was touched that he called and pleased have the chance to talk it over with him.

Today, a different client honored me with an invitation to a very small gathering of the primary lawyers his company uses nationwide. I won't go into it in detail here, but suffice it to say that his decision to include me is both professionally and personally meaningful to me, and I am proud.

The point of this post isn't to brag about myself . . . far from it. Rather, I wanted to acknowledge that no state of being is forever, that circumstances are forever changing and that there is always a chance for things to get better. You just never know what will be around that bend in the road.

A Little Legal Laugh and other Tidbits

I found this post, by Galveston County Judge Susan Criss, well worth a giggle. Maybe this is what Paul Harvey means by "the rest of the story." Via Susan at Kiss My Big Blue Butt (worth a look as well).

In other news, do you know these 100 words? Via Kottke.

Finally, a nominee for most annoying homeowner occurrence: Yesterday, the locksmith company tells you they will be at your house at 7am today. Today (at 8am), they tell you their locksmiths don't begin work until 8am and that yours is on another job, but will be at your house soon. Sleep is precious to me. I do not give it up willingly. I was awake at 5am today because I knew I had to be up and ready for the day when the locksmith arrived and was afraid if I went back to sleep, I would miss the appointment. I canceled and will call a company that doesn't lie tomorrow. ARGH.

UPDATE: If you click here, you will see that even people in Asia are wondering "how Bush won." This search brought the searcher to my blog.

Happy Friday, people! And eat your bananas.

Yay! Jay and Jenn have answered my Five Questions.

And their answers are wonderful and thoughtful and thought-provoking, despite the fact that the questions were asked by a journalistic weakling. I hope they won't mind if I post one question and answer from them each here, and link you to their sites for the rest:

From Jay's post, his intro that surprised me and a Q&A:

This is my 500th blog post. Crazy huh? I really never expected it to last this long at all. I figured I’d get bored with it and stop long before now.

My first commenter ever was Kell. But, Kell is my sister and is kind of obligated to comment and be nice. But, my first ever non-obligated commenter was Lisa from “A Clear View to a New Life”.

So, I thought it was only fitting that in honor of my 500th post, I would answer some questions* from Lisa...

1. You know how there are certain moments in life that feel magical, whether because they make you feel spectacularly good, or because they make you look at life a different way, or act differently than you did before? Tell me about one such moment that stands out in your memory and how it changed you.

Okay, so my first reaction to this question is that maybe you’re talking about my “first time”. If you know what I mean. But, NOBODY wants to hear about that so I’ll go with something different.

I think it would probably be the first trip I took to Northern California back in .... oh hell ... I think 1991. Anyway, it was a family vacation. Mom and I went out there to visit Kell and Al. Al was stationed at Mather AFB in Sacramento. We covered so much ground it was amazing. I definitely discovered that I was a traveler and not a tourist.

We not only covered all of Sacramento, we also hit Reno, Sonoma, Napa, San Francisco, The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose and the Monterey Peninsula, including the towns of Monterey, Carmel and a visit to Pebble Beach.

Okay, so you’re saying that sounds touristy. Well we didn’t just do the tourist stuff. We wandered all over the place and got off the beaten path. We avoided the tourist trap restaurants and went where the locals ate. We talked to locals and drove through the neighborhoods away from all the usual tourist areas. It was great.

The highlight was the last night in Monterey. I had never been any place like that before. As the sun was setting I sat on a park bench at Lover’s Point and just let the whole experience wash over me.

The tide was coming in and there was a beautiful fresh breeze coming in off the water. As I sat there I could hear this little “smacking” noise. I looked over and there was a sea otter laying on his back in the surf busily working to smash open his dinner on a rock that he strategically placed on his belly. As night fell over the bay and the lights of Monterey came up I first realized that there was a whole world of different sights and feelings and people to experience. I just had no idea before that trip there was anything like that anywhere.

From Jenn's post, her Q&A:

1. You mentioned you are on the verge of converting to being a Cubs fan. What will it take to push you over the edge? Just kidding! J Here is my actual question: Jenn, you are nothing if not a lover of books. What do you see as the qualities necessary for a truly great book and what book is, in your view, the greatest you have ever read?

A. To push me into being a Cubs fan? A day game at Wrigley Field. If you have an “in” on tickets I would love to hear about it because I have exhausted my (frankly
limited) resources.

B. You would think that seven years of studying literature and hundreds of books would give me an answer to your question. I've read so many really great books that it is difficult to choose just one as the greatest.

In my opinion, truly great books have an extraordinary narrative voice. A voice that holds a reader enthralled, and pushes him/her to keep reading, even if the subject matter is difficult, the phrasing dense, the emotional impact more then a person can normally bear. A truly great book stays with a person for days, weeks, months, even years after finishing it and it only needs to be read once.

The greatest book I ever read to date was Gabriel García Márquez's novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold. For the skill of the author to depict multiple and conflicting voices and versions of an event through a single narrator, for its ability to hold my attention long enough to finish it in one sitting and for the fact that I still remember the plot twelve years after reading it.

Thank you both for taking such care with your answers . . . as I mentioned on each of your blogs, I want to get through this crunch at work and then read your answers again and soak them up.

New Leaf

I accomplished barely anything with respect to work this weekend, and I came home for the weekend armed with enough work to kill a pig. (What?!?) How is that new, you ask? It isn't.

But this is: I will get to work at a decent hour today (i.e., by 8:00 a.m.) I have fallen into the habit of late of staying up too late, making it hard to get up early, and then once I get up, I spend a few hours procrastinating. Today, I will leave my house by around 7:30, dash in happily and roll up my sleeves to work.

If I say it, it will come true, right?

Memorial Day Thoughts

According to the AP, 3,452 members of our military have died in Iraq and 325 others have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan since 2001. Anyone who regularly reads my blog knows how I feel about the Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.

I cannot offer any thoughts more appropriate or eloquent than those in these two columns in today's New York Times. First, please read Paul Krugman's column, titled "Trust and Betrayal." If you cannot read it (it appears to be a Times Select offering), here are a few short excerpts that give you the flavor:

“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war.” That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

. . . . .

To keep the war going, the administration has brought the original bogyman back out of the closet. At first, Mr. Bush said he would bring Osama bin Laden in, dead or alive. Within seven months after 9/11, however, he had lost interest: “I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure,” he said in March 2002. “I truly am not that concerned about him.”

In all of 2003, Mr. Bush, who had an unrelated war to sell, made public mention of the man behind 9/11 only seven times.

But Osama is back: last week Mr. Bush invoked his name 11 times in a single speech, warning that if we leave Iraq, Al Qaeda — which wasn’t there when we went in — will be the winner. And Democrats, still fearing that they will end up accused of being weak on terror and not supporting the troops, gave Mr. Bush another year’s war funding.

Democratic Party activists were furious, because polls show a public utterly disillusioned with Mr. Bush and anxious to see the war ended. But it’s not clear that the leadership was wrong to be cautious. The truth is that the nightmare of the Bush years won’t really be over until politicians are convinced that voters will punish, not reward, Bush-style fear-mongering. And that hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

After you read Mr. Krugman's column, please read the contribution of Mike Kondor. This is the introduction to his story:

EVERY evening at 10, beeps emanate from the top drawer of my dresser. The sound comes from a watch that has resided there for just over three years. The 20 beeps signify that another day is dawning in Iraq. The watch belonged to my son, Specialist Martin Kondor, who was killed in action with the Army on the morning of April 29, 2004, in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad. Martin was 20 years old.

I dare you to read his work without a tear forming in your eye.

Thank you, all past and present U.S. troops, on this Memorial Day. Thank you for all that you do, all that you have sacrificed and the lessons of devotion that you leave for us all.

Big purchase

It took me literally all day yesterday to pack up the items I have been stockpiling for donation. Clothes, bedding, books, etc. Twelve large trash bags and one large laundry basket worth of items! But my guest room finally looks like a room habitable by humans again, and it is ready for my guest's arrival on Wednesday.

Turning to other things I have worked on this weekend, as part of making partner at my firm, I get to choose new furniture for my office. The budget is generous, but it is a lifetime budget, so I'm trying to use my money wisely. I was set to buy new furniture, a whole fancy put-together system that I designed (it would even have included a cabinet that could hold a small refrigerator!). But I was afraid of the price, which would have burned most of my budget. So, I turned back to the internet, finally discovering a place that has a really wide selection of used executive desks. There I found this lovely vintage set, which my friends K and D were nice enough to check out (and approve) for me this weekend, and which I was impulsive enough to buy this weekend, and I think I'm going to like it--have I made a crazy decision?

8' Vintage Walnut Desk Credenza Set

A Funk, The Weekend, and A Story

Have you ever experienced a major let down after accomplishing a life's dream (or at least a dream)? I am afraid I am in the midst of a major post-achievement funk. I have almost no desire right now to work on the things I'm supposed to be working on--meaning the things I am paid to work on, as opposed to my civil rights stuff (though I'm doing it anyway, of course). It is impossible for me to remember the last time I felt so bored. But my workload does not permit me the luxury of laziness at this time. ARGHHHHHH!

Anyway, it is the Memorial Day weekend, and I will be working a lot, but also preparing my house to welcome a guest on Wednesday. The guest is my friend M and it seems a good time to share the story of how I met M and his friend J, with J being one of my closest friends.



Sometime around 1995 or 1996, I was sent to Torrance, California on a document review project for a client. My law school friend/then colleague D and I were lucky enough to be assigned to stay at the client's preferred hotel, which was on the water in Redondo Beach, California. The project began one week and we had to stay in CA through the following week to meet with some other lawyers. Accordingly, we were required to stay through the weekend, with our only duty being to have reviewed all the documents by the following week, at whatever pace we chose. Rough task, right?

Neither D nor I had visited the Los Angeles area before, so we started each work day early and finished by late afternoon, which was an "early day" under law firm standards. We would dash back to our hotel, change into play clothes, and walk or roller blade or bike along the nice pedestrian path that traced the edge of the beach. There was always a nice place for dinner (D introduced me to sushi on this trip), followed by mellow evening activities. For the weekend, D and I wanted to really get out to see the city of Los Angeles in style, and we decided to try a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Despite the hype, however, the Big Saturday Night was a bit of a flop, as we realized we had chosen a Puck restaurant that was a chain (think California Pizza Kitchen) and that it was a bad idea to drink and drive around an unfamiliar city.

Feeling deflated, we returned to the hotel and wondered what we would do with the remainder of our evening. Entering the hotel lobby, we saw a group of well-dressed people milling about, with the unifying theme being that they were all drinking beer and having fun. Perhaps they saw us looking longingly at their merry group, and before we knew it, D and I each had a cold drink in hand, he was pulled into a poker game and we were happily visiting with the folks (they were the wedding party in a wedding that occurred earlier that evening). By now you will have guessed that both M and J were groomsmen in the wedding who lived nearby and that we got to know them over poker chips and beer.

Somehow in the midst of all the festivities, there was a little spark between M and me, and I found myself spending quite a bit of time with him in between reviewing documents. We continued to talk and see each other after my return to Texas, even going on a wonderful camping trip in the Redwood Forest in Northern California with a huge group of his friends. While getting to know M, I also got to know J, as J was his roommate. The romance with M was apparently not meant to last, as I abruptly ended it for reasons I no longer clearly remember. But J and I had become good friends by that time and we continue to be great friends to this day. In fact, it was J and the lovely girlfriend I "introduced" him to (by forcing him to sign up with an online dating service) with whom I had such a great time in Hawaii earlier this year.

In the last 10 or so years, M and I have stayed in touch through J, even spending some time together while attending a Cubs/Padres game with J and others last spring. He'll be in town this week on business and I am looking forward to showing him a bit of my world and catching up while he's here.

And now, I'm off to "work." Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!

Drumroll, please . . . The Five Questions

Okay, Jay and Jenn,

I took advantage of a night with a late-starting Cubs game and a lack of interest in performing billable work and have, at long last, written your Five Questions. The pressure on me was great, as Phil is a truly amazing question-asker and I finally tossed up my hands, giving up any hope of even approaching his Terri Gross-like interview prowess. So here's what you get:

Five Questions for Jay

You know how there are certain moments in life that feel magical, whether because they make you feel spectacularly good, or because they make you look at life a different way, or act differently than you did before? Tell me about one such moment that stands out in your memory and how it changed you.

You have been writing your blog since January 2006. What made you start your blog and what has most surprised you about the effect of your blog on your life?

You live in a small town in Arkansas, but through your blog you meet people all over the United States, and in other countries, too. Have you ever met someone “in real life” whom you first met through your blog? If so, tell me about that experience. And on a related note, if you actually met French News Anchor Melissa Theuriau, on whom I believe you have a small crush, what would your approach be in speaking with her (assuming you spoke French or she English)?

Speaking of your blog (again), you are so good at chatting with people and making them feel comfortable. You are also smart and an avid follower of things political. Have you ever considered running for office? If not, why not? If so, what office would you run for and what would your campaign theme be?

I remember you saying your Dad died about 10 years ago (I remember this because my Dad died almost nine years ago). Was your Dad’s death one of the most significant events in your life? And how did it change you as a person, if it did?

Five Questions for Jenn

You mentioned you are on the verge of converting to being a Cubs fan. What will it take to push you over the edge? Just kidding! J Here is my actual question: Jenn, you are nothing if not a lover of books. What do you see as the qualities necessary for a truly great book and what book is, in your view, the greatest you have ever read?

Turning to your actual life, if I had never met you before and knew nothing about you, what one story from your life would you tell me to give me an idea of the kind of person you are and the life you have lived?

Your musical favorites, as listed in your “about me” page of your blog, are quite interesting. Please give a brief narrative of your life in terms of which artist and/or song represents each phase.

About writing: have you made any progress on the novel that involves a sport about which you do not (did not) know much? Tell me about your writing process—how does it work? Do you have to be in the mood to write? In what setting do you write most prolifically? When are you most pleased by your writing?

I just saw this story on your blog:

My Christmas Memory

Christmas of 1996 I was a poor graduate student with a full time job, living in Greensboro NC. I was also very alone, as my family was in PA and most of my friends were heading back to their own families for the holiday.

It was my first Christmas away from home. I could not afford a plane ticket and did not have the time, because of my work schedule, to drive.

Until my ex-boyfriend, who I followed to North Carolina, called to ask if I wanted a ride as far as Latrobe. And one of my co-workers offered to switch vacation days so I could take the ride.

So Christmas Eve found me wrapped in a blanket, sitting in the passenger seat of the ex's Miata with the top down, driving through the mountains of West Virginia. The sky was clear, the stars bright and the radio was playing Elvis' Blue Christmas. It was a perfect moment.

My brother picked me up in Latrobe and drove me home, where I surprised my parents by walking through their bedroom door at 2 am.

Four years later, on a clear, cold, starry, January evening, I married the ex-boyfriend.

Could you please bridge the gap and let us know what exactly transpired between hitching a Christmas ride with the ex-boyfriend and marrying the ex-boyfriend?

*********************************************************

Here are the instructions, if you've forgotten them:

So if you want to play along and now be interviewed by me, please leave me a comment or send an email saying: "Interview me."
* I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
* You will update your weblog with the answers to the questions.
* You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
* Then others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions and so on.

Nesting

I spent much of the weekend doing things to tidy and beautify my house. My motivation was probably a combination of the impending "housekeeper visit day," the fact that I'm actually going to be in town for the next several weekends and my friend M's visit next week. Most of my work was putting away clothes and unpacking my suitcase from last week's NYC trip, other cleaning tasks and purchasing flowers and plants for my front porch and upstairs porch. Here are some pics of the flower purchases:

The red rose in the last pic was a gift from Mariolys, my favorite seller of cut flowers at the Farmer's Market. I hadn't seen her in a while and she was sweet enough to give me this beautiful flower.

What a strange feeling.

It is a Thursday night. The sun is still shining. It is just before 8:00 p.m. And I am at home, on my porch, doing something non-work related. I cannot remember the last time I was home from work at this hour and was not sick, leaving for vacation or dealing with a home improvement meltdown.

I'm trying to turn over a new leaf by arriving at work early, putting in a productive day and leaving at a reasonable hour to enjoy my evening.

Because I have extra time, I thought I would show you where I live, as I snapped some photos of the house while playing with my new wide angle lens the other day:

It is important to note that I have omitted the embarrassing portions of the house. But hopefully, those will not be embarrassing for long, as I have a friend coming in for a visit in a few weeks and am determined to not let the house be a disaster!

If you needed any further evidence . . .

. . . of the nature of the Bush Administration, this video provides all you need:



By way of background, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was extremely ill and in the hospital, so much so that his wife had barred any visitors. James Comey, then No. 2 at the Justice Department, was the acting Attorney General due to Ashcroft's illness.

Comey informed the White House that he would not be reauthorizing the warrantless wiretapping program the White House had maintained for a period of time, based on his belief that the program was illegal. The White House, not liking that answer, took the actions Comey describes in this video, through Alberto Gonzales (then White House Counsel) and Andrew Card (Chief of Staff).

Please watch it. Then, read this excellent editorial by the Washington Post.

Hel-LO!

I have been in New York for four days, with no internet access to speak of. And now I'm at LaGuardia Airport, awaiting my flight back to Dallas, and making lemonade of the lemons that led me to be here so early that I lost about an hour of goofing around time in the city. This will probably shock you, but I have a number of photos to share later. And stories, too.

Hope all is well with you!

Phil's Five Questions

Phil at The Archer Pelican was kind enough to humor me by asking me five questions (actually, because he's sneaky, six questions--but who's counting?) after he posted a meme in which he answered five questions that were asked of him. As you will see, Phil is not only an amazing researcher . . . he is also quite thoughtful and perceptive. Without further ado, here are the Qs and As:

1. I've often wondered about your blog title, "A Clear View to a New Life" and your Blogger subdomain, "eyebrow-raisingfolk". Care to comment a little on their origins? If you've written about these elsewhere in your blogs, feel free to just point us to the permalinks.

When I first created this blog (this one being the first of the trilogy), I called it “eyebrow-raising folk.” I dreamed then of writing for a living (writing things other than legal documents, I mean) and wanted to force myself to write every day for practice. My thought was that I would write about interesting people and things I saw, get in the habit of observing and find something to do that was not law-related. I did not know enough about blogs at the time to understand that this was a title of which I would quickly tire, and one that would not fit what my blog would ultimately become. But there it is still.

I later realized I could change the title of my blog as it appeared on the page, and thus “A Clear View To A New Life” was born. I believe the idea for that title sprang from a night in an Oklahoma City hotel room, smack in the middle of a week of out-of-town depositions. I was talking on the phone with my friend Jay, who had only known me for a short time and who only had (at that point) met me online, but who was intuitive enough and understood me well enough to observe that my way of making a living is not aligned with my—well, soul. We kept talking about what I could do that would be in line with me and came to the inescapable conclusion that I needed to be working on civil rights issues. I returned to Dallas and literally cried tears of relief as I thought over what Jay and I had discussed while driving out to the country kennel to pick up my dogs. Suddenly, my life took a new direction, as I had a goal and a dream.

2. Speaking of your blogs, plural: how do you feel about having three personal blogs instead of one? If you could start over from scratch, would you have organized your digital world any differently? (In my own world, the excess of options drives me a little nuts.)

Other than the titles and occasional pangs of annoyance with Blogger and its quirks, I am actually quite content with my three blogs. The first one (this one) is the most heavily used, and is where my words go. The second (“Travels Through The Lens”) is where I store the tales of my travels . . . it is as much for me as for anyone who might visit. I love going back to it and reminding myself of a particular trip and feeling briefly transported back into that moment, though I want to do a better job of truly capturing the nuances of those experiences. The third one (“Portfolio of Hope”) was created rather recently, as I started working on a portfolio of my photography to show to the guy who selects artists for the wall at my local coffee shop. I planned to use that blog to see which pictures worked together and which didn’t, so I could assemble a nice collection on disc for him to review. As you can see, I have not gotten very far with that yet, due to a shortage of time and computer transition issues. I think if I had more time to cast about on the internet (meaning, beyond the crazy amount of time I already spend there), I might find more attractive options than this, but I’m committed to it, and contended.

3. Not long ago (30 April, to be exact), you wrote about a wish to change, and the double role of fear. If you had one wish that you could use to either dispel that particular fear and issue, or gain a modest strength that you've often wished for -- which would you pick?

Gosh, this is such a good question—it actually provoked me into using the word “gosh”! I would use it to gain a strength, though I am not sure it is a modest one. I would wish to gain the wisdom or finesse or magic or whatever was required so that my brother would speak to me again.

4(a). For part (a) of this question, you will need to put aside both stubbornness and modesty for at least two minutes. M'kay? What are ten things that your friends enjoy (like, appreciate, etc.) and/or respect (admire, envy, wish for themselves, etc.) about you? TEN. And they don't need to be unique, either -- they can be great things that lots of people have, not just you.

Phil, I’m guessing that you wanted me to come up with ten things myself, but unfortunately, given my current frame of mind, I just couldn’t do it. I tried. But I could not conceive of a list of one thing, much less ten things. So I conducted a highly scientific survey of two of my dearest friends: Beth, whom I have known since we were 14 years old (we met when she poked me in the rear with a sharp pencil in a high school algebra class), and Jim, whom I have known for approximately 12 years (Jim and I have a great meeting story—I’ll have to share it with you sometime). So anyway, the following is a rough amalgam of Beth’s and Jim’s answers, which I was able to combine into a list of 12 . . . I found it interesting that they overlapped perfectly on two items (the “x2”):

1. good listener

2. caring x2

3. appreciates my quirkiness as much as i appreciate yours/ fun to be with

4. ambitious/ independent

5. not materialistic

6. dog lover

7. adventurous x2

8. loyalty

9. loves to laugh/ humorous/ wit / wisdom

10. someone who i am comfortable enough with to pee while we talk on the phone

10. openness

12. sports lover-loves chicago sports but will be immersed into any sports game even if it was 8 year olds playing

4(b). For part (b) of this question, you may respond publicly, privately by email to me, or just in your own head. Of the ten items above, which ones are you most delighted about (either openly or secretly), whether or not such feelings of delight might be considered a vice.

Of the items on the list above, the ones that leave me most delighted are:

1. good listener

2. caring

3. appreciates my quirkiness as much as i appreciate yours/ fun to be with

7. adventurous

8. loyalty

10. someone who i am comfortable enough with to pee while we talk on the phone

5. Your Blogger profile's list of favorite books would indicate that you can't be pinned down to an easily labeled ideology (i.e., dyed-in-the-wool Ayn Rand Objectivists are not, in my estimate, heavy consumers of U2 and Indigo Girls politics). Any thoughts on that? Feel free to answer this question in the context of an alternate and perhaps better question: whose baseball writing do you like better, George Will's or Frank DeFord's? No need to comment yet on Deford's new book, The Entitled. But feel free if you've already read it.

My ideology is somewhat eclectic. Politically, I consider myself more of a small “l” libertarian, in the sense that my ideal government is no more that is absolutely required and is “hands off” both socially and fiscally. I oppose the death penalty, without exception. I treasure the individual spirit and believe it should be permitted to thrive unimpeded, so long as others are not harmed by it. This is the Ayn Rand-loving part of me, I suspect. I only learned later, after falling in love with “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” that Rand is thought of by many as hostile to the concept of helping others. If that’s true, it is the place where she and I diverge in our thinking, as I love people (the global “people”) too much to let them suffer when we are in a position to help them get back on their feet. This dichotomy is also reflected in my work and volunteer choices . . . at work, I defend employers being sued by their employees for alleged mistreatment, and am comfortable with doing so, in that I have no problem battling to defeat employees who were not treated unfairly and are trying to get something for nothing. When that isn’t the case, I work toward a result that is fair for all involved, while representing my client’s best interests, of course. In my volunteer work, I stand up for the rights of individuals against those who try to infringe upon such rights. I don’t know if this is the explanation you were looking for, but basically, you are right and it’s complicated!

I really wanted to write about Will and DeFord, but I don’t read either of them. Though now I will.

So if you want to play along and now be interviewed by me, please leave me a comment or send an email saying: "Interview me."

* I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
* You will update your weblog with the answers to the questions.
* You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
* Then others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions and so on.

By the way, as Phil said, too, I'd looove to write questions for anyone, so don't be shy.

Is there a limit to the amount of self-loathing one can have?

I do not feel good about myself tonight. I feel as if I do not know myself anymore.

Overly critical.

Gossipy.

Short-tempered.

Selfish.

Irrational.

Fat.

Unlovable.

And that's just for starters . . .

One of my least favorite expressions

"And I don't care that he's black, or green, or purple, or yellow, or whatever."

--Curt Schilling, and a gajillion other idiots.

Don't get me wrong. I agree that Barry Bonds is a cheat and shouldn't be able to break major league baseball's home run record. But I hate that expression.

A Few Good Men

I watched this movie again tonight:



In it, Aaron Sorkin wrote, and Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise acted, what I believe is one of the best movie courtroom scenes ever.

What tickets are in my planner?

In my beloved Franklin planner binder (I rotate them, like shoes or purses), there is a zippered pocket that holds all of my tickets for the year. Tickets will be added from time to time, and of course tickets leave the pocket as they are called into use. Some tickets are singles; others are in twos or threes. But the tickets found in there at any given time provide a glimpse into how I will be spending my free time:

May 13, 2007 Talk Radio, at the Longacre Theatre in New York City
May 14, 2007 Cubs v. Mets, at Shea Stadium
June 1, 2007 Madame Butterfly, at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas
June 19, 2007 Cubs v. Rangers, at the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas
June 20, 2007 Cubs v. Rangers, at the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas
June 21, 2007 Cubs v. Rangers, at the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas
August 6, 2007 Cubs v. Astros, at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas
August 31, 2007 N.H. Fisher Cats v. Trenton Thunder, at Merchantsauto.com Stadium, Nashua, New Hampshire

Oh, and that reminds me that I need to plan a few things to do in New York next weekend (I will be there for four days). I don't like for my time to be too planned, but if I don't have some sort of "to do" list, I end up going to all of my old favorite haunts and not seeing anything new. So here are a few of the things I want to see/do on this trip to New York:

See college roommate Lori
In Brooklyn, Coney Island and Prospect Park
See a play (ticket listed above)
Have a bite and a drink at this place
Photograph at the Cloisters
Visit this movie theatre to catch a showing of Paris Je T'Aime
See the Cubs play the Mets (ticket listed above)
Meet up for a drink with this man
See the Steve Pyke exhibit at Flowers Gallery

Oh, and I am researching how to photograph with a wide-angle lens. I have a new one and am worried I will come back with a slew of unusable photos, as my telephoto lens is in the shop after the terrible accident it experienced in Chicago.

What plans are you looking forward to, my friends?

About Lubbock . . .

I traveled to Lubbock, Texas for business this week and I have to say it was one of the nicest business trips I remember having . . . certainly the nicest trip I have had to a God-forsaken place in recent memory.



(Picture by Paul Rosales)

After an uneventful 7:30 a.m. flight, the day began with a paralegal who works for my client picking me up at the airport. She had arrived in Lubbock the day before in order to spend time with her grandparents. This is our second trip to Lubbock together and we have already developed a routine of stopping at the only Starbucks to get coffee that will help us get through our day. When I told her I was thinking of grabbing a bite to eat as well, having flown out too early to eat breakfast, she offered an alternative. Her grandfather had made his special breakfast sandwiches that morning and told her to bring "that girl" by for a sandwich if she was hungry. Even though her description of the contents of the sandwich frightened me, my love of adventure, coupled with my gratitude to a kind grandparent, would not allow me to refuse.

So I found myself standing in the entryway of her grandparents' lovely, art-filled home, gazing around and wishing I could spend my day exploring it. Her adorable four-year-old son had already done that, having squeezed in a few rounds of hide-and-seek-with-great-grandma before we arrived. He entertained me with a newly-acquired toy while his mother fetched the promised sandwich for me. After saying thank you and exchanging some friendly goodbyes, we were off and I was munching on a whole wheat English muffin topped with a fried egg and pimento cheese.

Our work day passed quickly, with us completing our mission quite effectively. Before I knew it, we were winging back to the airport so I could catch my 6:05 p.m. flight back to Dallas. There was no need to hurry, as it turned out, because weather in another part of the state was holding up the planes and my flight was delayed until 7:30 p.m.

After stocking up on chick magazines to last through a potentially long wait, I found a seat at the non-smoking end of the airport bar. There was much discussion about the flight situation among the patrons. Before long, I learned during a call to the airline that my plane also was experiencing a mechanical problem and would not arrive until at least 9:00 p.m., which soon turned into 10:15 p.m. The bar was packed and the guy next to me and I started chatting while he doused his caesar salad with Tobasco sauce. He was scheduled for a later flight that was now actually set to depart earlier than mine, and on the strength of his tip, I switched to that flight. We had a nice visit about his wife the police officer, our dogs, the fact that his mother has worked for years for the very client I was visiting that day, his work, that we each were in car accidents last week and our random life experiences with religion. It was one of those heartwarming times when you meet a person who is friendly, kind and interesting, with life experiences that intersect yours just enough to make the conversation flow easily.

The time passed quickly and we were soon off to catch our flight, which miraculously left "as scheduled" around 9:15 p.m. While I can sometimes be impatient, I let myself stay in the moment and thoroughly enjoyed the wait. But that doesn't mean I am in a hurry to return to Lubbock. :)

This is an example of the things that make me love baseball . . .

a story from last night's rain-suspended game between the Cubs and the Pirates. Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune writes about this exchange between Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly and Cubs manager Lou Piniella:

The Lilly-Piniella incident was one for the books. Lilly had slipped on a bunt attempt for the second time when Piniella gave him some unsolicited advice.

"I suggested to him, almost like football, 'You better change your spikes,'" Piniella said. "Then I went out there and he said, 'Skip, your zipper is down.' "

A quick check by Piniella revealed Lilly was correct.

"How he noticed that, I don't know," Piniella said with a laugh. "Oh, Lord."

Lilly was surprised Piniella was so forthcoming.

"Did he tell you guys?" Lilly said. "I was just trying to help him out. I thought he might be on national television."

Silly? Yes. In what other sport will you find this in a post-game story?

You must read this.

I'm going to write more about my previous post and your thoughtful responses to that post soon.

But in the meantime, I wanted to make sure you have the chance to read the most important article written so far about the Attorney General Purgegate scandal. Writes Murray Wass of the National Journal:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison "the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration" of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department's political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

. . . . .

The senior administration official who had firsthand knowledge of the plan said that Gonzales and other Justice officials had a "clear obligation" to disclose the plan's existence to the House and Senate Judiciary committees -- but the official said that, as far as he knew, they had not done so. When the committees began to inquire into the firings of the U.S. attorneys, the official said, Congress had a right to know that the firings were part of an ambitious effort to install administration loyalists throughout the department. The official spoke on the condition that neither his position nor agency be identified, because he feared retaliation from his superiors and the White House for disclosing aspects of the program.

Referring to the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the broader plan targeting other Justice employees, the senior official said, "You cannot separate one from the other. They were one and part of the same plan by the White House."

Now go read the rest of the article . . . you'll be hearing more about it soon.