My, they do learn fast.

A newly-Christened blogger turns to me in the middle of class today and says;

"Holy crap, this blogging thing is addictive."

Welcome to the club.

How to play at the Australian Open

Dominate the first set so that it appears that the match will be a cake walk, and then, choke so badly that someone just tuning in would belive that this is the first time you've held a racquet.

Davenport did it.
Roddick did it.
Hewitt followed suit.

Apparently, it's the In thing to do.

Value of my time = $0

I hit a landmark today. 100 hours of pro bono service. I think I am now in the gold level of pro bono certification. 50 more and I go platinum.

Total hours of paid legal work I have had during my law school career= 0.

Jesus Radio Moment of the Week

As I've mentioned before, Jesus Radio does these short little inspirational stories sporadically during their programming. And the woman's voice is everything you could imagine a Jesus Radio DJ to be; grating and like she's talking to a 3 yr old. Yesterday's moment went like this [as paraphrased by me]:

I recently went on a retreat with some of my friends. One night, we were making the trip up to the nightly campfire, and I had only packed a small flashlight. As I was walking along, the light wasn't much help and I stumbled and tripped. All of the sudden, I was bathed in light as my friends all shone their flashlights on me. They were helping to show me the way so that I could see clearly and wouldn't stumble. What great friends.

Honey, I hate to tell you, but if your friends are anything like mine, they were only shining the lights on you so that they had a clear, unobstructed view as they laughed themselves to tears over your humiliation. And I bet one or two of them captured the moment on a camera phone to publish on their blog once they returned to reality. Those who will laugh at you during your most embarrassing moments are your true friends.

In the eye of the beholder.

My dad mentioned to me the other day that he had had some free time during lunch so he decided to check out my blog. He actually chimed in with "you can read about it on her blog" tonight when my mom asked me a question. Officially now, both the parents are regular readers. We're turning into one of those anti-drug commercials that urge parents to "know where your children are" and "be involved".

But both of my parents have stated that they enjoy reading the blog and even find it funny. Odd how when I say something on here I'm funny, but when I say something in real life, I'm a smartass.

Parental Concern

Amanda and I headed out to our cars last night after Beer and Nacho law and discovered that they were covered in a layer of snow and ice. It was the kind of freezing rain that doesn't just come off with a swipe of the washer blades. So, we had to dig out the ice scrapers.

While we're scraping our respective cars, I mention to her that I bet my parents have called to warn me about the weather conditions. Because that's the kind of parental thing they tend to do. They usually call to tell me if the roads are slick, or if there is an accident or a road blockage that is going to delay my drive home. I think it's done mostly for their own sanity so that I can take and alternate route and not be in any more of a bad mood when I get home. But it's routine parent behavior.

So last night, I hop into the car, and while it's warming up, I check my messages. And sure enough there's one from my mom:

Hi Heidi, it's Mom. I couldn't remember what time you were coming home tonight and it's about 10 after 7. [Typical start to message] Well, if you could give me a call when you get this to let me know when you're going to be home. I wanted a Frosty from Wendy's and was hoping you could stop and pick one up for me.

Here I am all prepared for the mom weather update, and all she wanted was an FFJ run. And I thought I knew my parents. I told her when I got home that she was making the blog, and she tried to spin it as it was code for letting me know that it was "frosty and windy out." Nice try ma.

They say all lefties have a twin somewhere.

Your Famous Blogger Twin is Dave Barry

Funny, witty, and clever! You always have a ton of offbeat links to share

Who's Your Famous Blogger Twin?

I spy the Creepy Guy

Went to return some books at the bookstore and had an intereting encounter. I was passed by an older, bearded man in the parking lot and he said "hello." Being the friendly gal that I am, I said hello back. And he promptly turned around and started following me. He followed me all the way up to the store, and then stood outside with his face pressed to the window staring in.

He was starting to creep out the customers in line ahead of me, and they mentioned it to the cashier. Another worked came in and informed us that there were 2 police officers now surrounding creepy guy in the parking lot. The one cashier said that he'd been hanging around asking people for money. Normal.

But she said that he came into the store after they were closed the other day and when she asked if she could help him he said "Yeah, I'd like to be locked in here after hours with you." Creepy.

When I left to return to my car, creepy dude was indeed surrounded by the two officers who were talking to him rather sternly. I didn't stick around to hear the topic.

And you thought your childbirth was difficult.

Moms everywhere can sympathize with a South American woman who gave birth to a 16 1/2 pound baby recently. Now, we know Hoolia has a fondness for the Latin American countries, but let's hope she doesn't aspire to have her bambino live up to these standards.

Search and ye shall find.

Search terms that led people to my site this past week:

4 people found my site yesterday by searching for some variation of flamingo flocking.
cake receipts
bow chica wow-wow
food poisoning hot dog
fresh rocky mountain oysters
ransom notes
naked Andy Roddick Pictures [don't worry Mom and Dad, there aren't any here]
preacher license joke
Glutton Bowl [heh, we weren't the only poor souls to catch it]
engraved souvinir glasses [surprisingly, I was the only hit]
gay blind date sex [not here either M and D]
receipt eating in biosphere [what's with these receipts?]
picture of dog eating [eating what?]
pictures of people waiting to be check at a clinic
birthday presents for 40 year olds
sandwhiches
"DON'T ATTEND LAW SCHOOL" [it was actually in all caps and quotes]
NFL Tom Brady Porn Pic [umm, no.]

I have a feeling that after this post, I'm going to have to explain to the parents how people can get here via those search terms without those items actually being on here.

Random odd dream of the week.

Had another of those anxiety-induced dreams the other day, which usually coincide with finals, but for some reason decided to rear its ugly head prior to the semester. In this version, I was at school, but had forgotten to print off my schedule of classes. [Actually, this part of the dream rings true as I had to flag down someone in the hall to find out where a class was today.] The computer lab had a computer for every student, and you could only log on to your specific computer. And I couldn’t remember my computer number. I kept thinking it was 1171, but it never worked.

So for 3 days I try to figure out which of the computers is mine, all the while missing all of my classes. I don't know why, at this point, I never went home to check on my computer, but that logic has no place in my dreams. I finally figure out that my computer was 1171 ½, but since there was no computer by that number, I had to use the 1172. And it finally worked.

I make it to my first class, only to catch the last 5 minutes. I’m not sure the topic, but it was being taught by Celine Dion, and she had decided to lead the class in a rendition of ‘We are the World'. Perhaps it was one of those touchy feely classes I usually associate with caring, kind, and compassionate lawyers like Deb. Which makes it all the more odd that I'd be enrolled. After class, I approach Prof. Dion to explain why I had missed the first few classes, and begged her for mercy to let me make up the work. She, of course, denies my pleas, and argues that I will have to take zeros for the assignments. I get a little blurry as to what happened next, but I just remember the dream ending with me yelling in her face at full volume, “You’re just a wannabe law teacher anyway.” That's me. Heidi, Queen of the lame comebacks.

Other recent dreams of note are the one I had last week where Jonny Depp, in full Pirates of the Carribean garb, abducted me and took me to remote location and tied me to a tree for days. And there was one where I thought the reason I knew Lawren was because she had been on the Real World a few years ago. I think my psyche is telling me I need to watch less Oprah and not cave to the Real World marathons when I can't sleep at night. Oh, and never get into a car with a man dressed as a pirate.

File this one under “Things I should have really considered before rushing to a decision.”

I started the final semester of my law school career today with an 8:45 a.m. class. Whatever possessed me to take an early class during my last semester, I’ll never know. In principle, 8:45 doesn’t seem like all that early. But in practice, once you back it up an hour and a half for driving, an hour for getting ready, and 15 minutes which to decide if I’m actually going to get out of bed for the day or pretend it’s a weekend, and we’re at 5:30. For those of you doing the math at home, you must factor in that I have to arrive at school by 8:00 so that I don’t have to park in Canada. I’ve decided that for all intents and purposes the Michigan Street lot might as well be in Michigan State, especially when hoofing it in the balmy 12 degree weather. And the far lot to the North will now be called either the Upper Peninsula or Canada depending on my mood.

It’s difficult to believe that I used to have an 8:45 class every morning first year. It’s even more difficult to believe that prior to law school, I used to voluntarily start work at 6:30 a.m. Those flexible government hours are a killer.

But the early class wasn’t my stupid decision for the semester. The dumb move would be my choice to have 2 classes on Wednesday; one that ends at 10:06 a.m., and the next which starts at 6:35 p.m. And living far away, I can’t just go home to nap. Let me tell you, there’s a lot of stuff you can get done in 8 ½ hours and still have time to dramatically whine and put on a show about how long it is till your next class. Today, for instance, Kelly P, JC and I visited the bookstore, hung out at Starbucks, visited the other bookstore, got our new IDs, and closed out JC’s bank account and still made it back to school before 3. I’m glad we got all of that done, but now that all of our errands are done for the semester I’m at a loss as to how we’re going to spend the next 14 Wed. afternoons.

I want my Sunday afternoons back.

And I think the Colts offensive coordinator owes me that much. After watching a team successfully plow through the regular season, I was treated, once again, to a team that looked like today was their first time playing together. I'm sick of them saying "we're not going to change the way we play" and then doing just that. Today's offense was not the offense that played during the season. Did they leave the passing game back on their practice field? Yes, I realize at the moment I typify the fair weather fan, but let's just say they've always been referred to as the Dolts in our household.

I'm starting to buy into the theory that our receivers are soft and that Peyton can't handle the pressure. When it happens time after time, you can't keep using the same excuses. In an interview after the game, Peyton said something along the lines of "maybe next year will be our year." Funny, he said the same thing last year. Perhaps they just replayed his press conferences from a year ago. Same game, same end.

It's beginning to look like the only way the Colts will ever make a Superbowl appearance is if they get home field advantage all through the playoffs, or someone else beats the Pats. Cause they just ain't getting it done. Now, next fall, I'll sit back in front of my TV and hope for another record setting year, but right now, I'm just bitter. It's sad to watch a team that you know can excel go out there and crumble.

It's a wrap.

Ok, so it's coming a little later than promised, but the much anticipated gift wrapping post is here.

When I was younger, I joined the local 4-H. Over the years I did a variety of projects from showing goats to baking cookies and geology to cake decorating. But my best area, by far, was gift wrapping. Though I lacked a lot in creativity, I made up for it in execution.

For those not familiar with the 4-H structure, there are different levels in each area. For gift wrapping, the different levels denote different shapes of packages that must be wrapped. Div 1 is a normal box, Div 2 was a box and separate lid and so on. Then each division is judged and multiple projects can receive a blue ribbon. From the blue ribbons they select a champion and reserve champion, and then an overall gift wrapping grand champion and reserve grand champion are selected. I was lucky enough to win a couple of grand champions and a few reserve grands. My first year we had to wrap the gift in front of the judges, and I wrapped a package in a map and used stick pins to mark certain places. It was all my mom's idea, and for it, I won the reserve grand ribbon. It was a proud day for an 8 year old.

In the later years, I was required to wrap a cylinder shaped package. I ended up wrapping a coffee can with shiny paper, coiled a spring and attached it to the top, used a styrofoam ball and made a clown head. All of which resulted in a fabulous jack in the box. I spent a great deal of time on that one, and would have been satisfied with another reserve grand champion ribbon. But I was robbed. That year, the grand champion went to to some chick who likely spent 5 minutes on her project. She "wrapped" a picnic basket by taking a wire basket and putting a piece of cloth in the bottom and pushing the corners of the cloth through the corners of the basket. Yeah, really hard work there. Apparently the judges thought that a picnic basket was creative. I thought it more likely that her mom was one of the judges. But whatever, no permanent scars.

I do, however, get stuck wrapping most presents in our house. This past Christmas I had to wrap all of my dad's presents to people, and some of my mom's. And I lost what little creativity I had when I was younger. So usually the quality of said presents is quite lacking. And thus, even though Kelly P. has stated that my next present to her must be wrapped, she may wait with baited breath. Because this wrapping machine has her limits.

Have flamingo. Will travel.

This post stems from the vacation tale in the previous post.

My church used to do this fundraiser that they called "flocking." They had purchased a few dozen pink flamingo lawn ornaments and would put them up in people's yards. That person could then pay the fee to have them removed, and pay a bit more if they wanted to nominate someone else to be flocked.

We were flocked the morning of Memorial Day one year. Only we didn't know it. My brother in law had a friend in town for the Indy 500, and sometime that morning, they got up and noticed that we'd been flocked. They decided that rather than pay, they were going to take matters into their own hands and take them to someone else. Only they couldn't figure out how to get the wire legs out of the ground. Instead, they took all of the bodies and dumped them in our preacher's yard. When we found them, our lawn was littered with all of these metal flamingo legs, only no flamingos. It was a pretty funny sight.

This spawned an idea, and we kidnapped the flamingos. We made ransom notes, took pictures of the legs, and also had a hangman shown ready to kill them. Then we had the guy that ran the church website come over and take pictures, and the heist was on.

We eventually gave the flamingos back, save two. These two made it into my luggage and out west with us. The whole trip we spent taking pictures of "Fred and Fern Flamingo" at the Grand Canyon, the MGM Grand, the painted desert, and all of the other sights. Then we mailed them, along with post cards to the youth minister. He thought it was pretty funny. At points during the trip, we had taken the straps off of our water bottles and were using them to carry the flamingos around like purses. They were actually quite a conversation piece. They swam in the pool with my brother, and they accompanied me to the clinic when I had food poisoning. We have this great picture of me sitting in the waiting room of the clinic, holding one of those crescent hospital pans to be sick in one hand and a flamingo in the other and looking like I'm about to die.

You can't take me anywhere.

I shamelessly and entirely stole this post idea from E.Spat. Her recent post about travel horror stories and superfluous vomit reminded me of my own worst travel tale and I felt compelled to share. Some of you have heard this before and I guarantee I won't tell it as elequently as E.S. told hers. You'll deal.

When I was in college, I took a trip with my parents, my brother and our good friends and their son out to Arizona and Las Vegas. We flew out on the 4th of July, when the temp in Indiana was in the 90s. Something was wrong with our plane and they couldn't turn on the electricity, so for an hour we sat at the gate stewing in our own sweat and smelling the rotting sandwhiches we were handed as we boarded. They finally let us get off and wait as they tried to jump start the plane. Those were their exact words. And stupidly, we got back on once they jumped it and were treated to an inflight movie of Titanic. Always a great choice when your own death is looming over your head.

We get to Phoenix, spend a few uneventful days there, and then drive down to Tucson. Our first night there, we ate at some cowboy steakhouse, and I dined on an old favorite; country fried steak. Only I was about halfway through my dinner, I cut into the steak and it started bleeding all over the plate. Now I'm the type of person who has to have a regular steak well done, and for those not familiar, this type of steak is not one that can be served rare. I should have known then that I was in trouble.

The next day we traveled to the biosphere. [There's an entire other story about how we were supposed to go there on my 8th grade trip when we went out west. But that school trip will have to take up a post of its own someday.] I generally didn't feel well the whole day, and didn't eat much of anything. Later that night, we went to a TGIFridays and I ordered some sort of pasta dish with zuchinis and bowtie pasta. I've never eaten zuchini, but it was one of those dishes where I could eat around it. I still wasn't feeling all that well, but nothing alarming yet.

When we returned to the hotel, we went down to our friends' room to play cards. While sitting there, they were eating some sort of popcorn, and the smell of it was making me sick. I made some sort of comment that I wasn't going to eat anything for the next two days. I'd later find out I was right. I started to feel really sick, and headed back to my room. My dad was there watching TV, and he actually looked away from the TV long enough to notice my sprawled out form on the bed. He got one of the trash cans and sensing impending illness, lined it with a plastic bag.

About 3 minutes later, I started heaving. And heaving. I was on my stomach with only my head hanging off of the bed. I too am not a fan of vomitting, but at this point, it didn't matter. I had bowtie pasta coming out of my nose. I don't remember much else, except I too cry when I vomit, and I know my entire face was wet and I felt like I was dying. My mom later told me that she called the front desk and asked where she could take the trash. A guy came to the door and couldn't understand why we'd need to take out the trash. She showed him, and he finally understood.

I spent every 20 minutes in the bathroom for the rest of the night. I have this phobia of bathrooms so I won't sit on the floor, and instead stood and leaned, bracing myself with my arms outstretched to the wall behind the toilet. It was a fun night. The next day we were leaving Tuscon and heading to Flagstaff. I had to shower before going anywhere, and I now appreciate having the toilet so close to the shower that you can just stick your head out mid-shower and take care of business. We then went to some clinic where they triaged me right back into a room and gave me a shot. I was also given some sort of pill to take and told that it would make me drowsy, and then sent on my merry way.

For the first time in my life, my parents let me lay down in the back of a car without being buckled. My brother was sent to the other family's car, and I slept the entire drive. At one point, they had stopped to see some castle in a wall, and I woke up, noticed that they left the car on for me, and I thought they were wasting gas, so I turned it off and went back to sleep. It was 116 that day, and I didn't even notice burning up in the car.

Most of the next 3 days are completely gone from my memory. I was only up for about 5 minutes at a time. I didn't have to use the bathroom since I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything, and I mostly laid in my cozy bed oblivious to the world. They often bring up points of the trip that I attended, but I don't remember them because I was so drugged up. My mom actually hid my pills from me and wouldn't let me take any more.

To this day, the smell of zuchini makes me ill. I've formed an aversion to it since I associate that smell with the food poisoning incident. And, I know all too well what stomach acid tastes like because after about 3 vomits, the next 85 are all dry heaves. When I was first diagnosed with migraines, my doc prescribed these nasal inhalors that I was supposed to use. They were the foulest things I can remember ever having to use, and often would prefer suffering to taking them. He once asked me what they tasted like, and I could honestly respond that they tasted like stomach acid.

And we have the whole thing on film, which is what the next post is about.

Hello, my name is Heidi and I'm a breadmachineaholic.

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm addicted to my mom's breadmachine. And I blame my dad. It all started when he decided to get her one for Christmas, but instead of actually picking it out himself, I had to do his dirty work and pick one up at a Target in Indy. [We all remember how I don't have a Target anywhere around here.] But in searching for said breadmachine, I became entranced with all of its features and buttons, and felt the need to try each and everyone out for myself. I can't control myself around it.

We broke the thing out of its box on the day after Christmas. And since then, I've made at least one loaf a day, usually two, and on a good day, I've squeezed in three. The instruction manual includes dozens of recipes, and I've been baking and marking up the book with notes regarding our opinions of the bread. Was it too doughy? Too bland? Not enough sugar? I think I enjoy it because it's so easy and makes me feel like I can actually bake. We all know Kee Kee sets the gold standard for baking, and it's one that I don't even dare dream of achieving. But I have a late holiday party coming up, and I'm working on which breads would be best to bring. The machine even makes jam. It's a miracle worker, I tell ya. Imagine, warm, homemade bread with fresh strawberry jam.

Watch out Betty Crocker, there's a new girl in town.

Observations from the front pew.

When you arrive at church at the last minute, you're usually relegated to front pew status. I still maintain that the clocks at church are off since my dad always begins anouncements when my watch is still showing 5 min. till service. I've pointed this out to him, and he's suggested I adjust and arrive a bit earlier. Yeah, right.

Today our sermon included a little statistical handout that showed the breakdown of the members of the church. With close to 700 members, about 350+ were over the age of 40. Another 200 were below the age of 21. Which leaves us a grand total of 143 people in the 21-40 age group. [I still protest having to be included in a group with 40 year olds.] And of that 143, approximately 142 are married/divorced/engaged/remarried.* Hi.

Part of our service includes a communion time, where we pass around trays with chiclet sized pieces of bread and individual cups of juice. This is generally a solemn and private time, but today, the kid behind me kept asking his mom what flavor it was today. This was mildly cute for about 3 minutes, until the mom let him talk at full volume for the rest of the sermon. I almost turned around and handed her the insert from the bulletin on politeness training for children. Apparently, someone is coming to teach the kids how to behave in different settings, such as eating at home, eating in a restaurant, behaving in church, etc. Although this activity is voluntary in principle, I'm digging out our church stalker book and nominating a few of the precious little ones. Baby boot camp here you come.

* Statistics on marriage gathered via 27 years of sitting in church pews watching couples fawn all over each other in the presence of God and man. Said fawing has been known to increase the likelihood of vomitting amongst single church members.

Separating the Pitts

In a sad turn of events, the Pitts are calling it quits. After nearly 5 years of marriage, the two have decided to formally separate. Color me sad. I know it's ridiculous to become attached to a Hollywood couple, but I was pulling for these 2. I always wonder if the constant scrutiny takes it's toll on a relationship. And while we've heard for months about the possibility of their splitting, sadly, we'll probably live through 5 years of tabloids speculating that they're back together. I just hope that the Angelina Jolie rumor was just that.

The Music in my Head.

The music playing the soundtrack of my life right now:
Alexi Murdoch
Gary Jules
The Garden State Soundtrack
Tyler Hilton

All fabulous music. After enjoying my Alexi Murdoch for a while, I was pleasantly surprised to hear one of his songs on my Garden State DVD. After a little research I found out that his "Orange Sky" is the only song from the movie not included on the soundtrack. Interesting how my music choices come full circle.

Ironic.

The Noah's Ark Preschool will be closed tomorrow due to flooding and freezing rain.

The Glutton Bowl

Flipping through the channels on New Year's Eve, we found that the bowl season had truly began. In fact, we found a bowl we had never even heard of; the Glutton Bowl. Competition consisted of 6 men (or women) in each heat lining up and seeing who could eat the most of some food in the alloted time. One guy ate 38 hard boiled eggs, another ate 8 sticks of butter, and someone else dined on 8 pounds of mayonaise. After the heats, they held a wild card round where the runner's up competed for a spot in the final. The food of choice was rocky mountain oysters. And what bowl final would be complete without cow brains. The ultimate winner ended up being the world hot dog eating champ, and he ate somewhere in the neighborhood of 54 cow brains in the span of 30 minutes. What a champ.

My cousin has declared that this is a must event for every New Year's Eve from now on. Though I'm not certain I could stomach another one. At certain points the competitors had 3 inches of snot hanging out of their noses and were wearing as much food on their clothing as they were consuming. It almost spoiled our own gluttonous evening consuming every snack food known to man.

Batten down the hatches folks; the Mom reads the blog.

After a post declaring why I never told my parents the address of the blog, I have come to learn that the Mom already knows it. And has in fact been playing the at home version for a few months. [Hi Mom!!]. This is actually not a bad thing as leading the secretive double life was a bit trying at times. Peter Parker I am not. And I think she was probably relieved to learn I wasn't running a drug ring or internet porn site on my blog. Instead, it's mostly boring stuff that I tell her anyway.

But the Mom is interested in the whole blogging phenomenon, and I've offered to add her as a guest poster if she desires. So the outlook for 2005 may include "Waiting for the Punchline--the Mom version". I'll keep you posted.