When You Go For a Sex Change and They Sew On a Second Penis . . .
Category: News and Politics
That's not change. That's more of the same.
I realize this episode is a week old but, sweet Jesus, I love the Daily Show. If you have 22 minutes -- and you know you do, somewhere -- check out the video. I promise, it is worth your time.
They Shoot Law Examinees, Don’t They? (Part II)
Category: Life
As of July 28th, 2008, I had three years of law school under my belt. Add to that two and half months of bar exam prep classes.
I had gotten progressively better in my weakest multistate area, property.
I had vastly improved my essay-writing skills.
And I had been working out up to an hour a day, drinking my milk, and flossing my teeth.
I was a well-oiled, bar exam-taking machine.
But none of that prepared me for the night before the first day of the bar.
I have testing anxiety like you would not believe. Despite stopping my last minute study session well before I needed to turn out the light, I still couldn't sleep. The bed was too cold. The room was too hot. My legs were restless. The few times I had managed to fall into a light sleep, I was almost immediately awakened by my brain's insistence on asking review questions.
"How does a creditor go about securing a purchase money security interest?"
In Dream Land, April cannot run fast, punch hard, or answer bar questions.
Shit, shit, shit.
It was 2:00 AM and I had had maybe a half hour of sleep. I was supposed to be getting a wakeup call in three and a half hours. To make matters worse, my tossing and turning had disturbed my boyfriend, who appeared to have no test anxiety issues of his own.
Seven hours passed. I wasn't doing much better.
When not trying to ignore both the shaking of the table that occurred when my neighbor would erase something and the sporadic farting noises coming from the back of the room, I was crying on the inside over the unbearable cramp in my left hand and trying not to mix up various areas of the law.
Trust me, if there was anyone in that group of 500+ who could brilliantly screw up an answer, it would have to be me.
I could just imagine it. I'd open my test booklet to find a question on child support and write something totally asinine:
In the state of Indiana, a biological parent has a legal duty to provide support only to the child he or she loves the most, until the child turns 21, marries, joins the military. This policy is based on the "Portfolio Theory," which holds that society benefits from the investment of its resources in those children whom we deem are worth keeping around. First, financial resources are taken from the parent's assets and placed into a trust . . .
Did I really have to go through three hours of writing memos by hand in the morning, followed by four hours of writing essays by hand in the afternoon, covering any number of twelve or so possible topics, followed by six hours of multiple choice questions the next day?
It almost made me wish the bar exam consisted of one day of hazing served up by a Purdue fraternity.
Seriously, couldn't the Board just shove a broomstick up my ass and call it a day?
During the afternoon session, I came across a question that had me aching to run to the corner Speedway for a bottle of lube and ask a proctor to do the deed.
After I read through the entire question once, I formed the following response: Huh? However, I had read somewhere that bar examiners prefer that you cover at least a page and a half in your answer; otherwise, they might dock you a few points, believing that your brief reply could not possibly cover every point they were looking for. As it stands, "Huh?" barely covers a fifth of one line and even then, only if you write in some stretched out font like Blackoak Std.
My first instinct was to outline an answer discussing tort liability and impleader - but that wasn't right. It couldn't be. Torts is a multistate subject, not an Indiana essay subject; Indiana civil procedure was one of the potential essay subjects but the impleader was really only a small part of the question. No, there was something bigger I wasn't picking up on, some issue I was not spotting.
I read the question again. Still no clue.
Panic set in.
I read the question a third time. They were obviously looking for an answer that discussed corporate law - but how could I write a responsive answer without knowing what specific issue I was to address? More panic. I knew I should have reviewed corporations the night before, instead of going over my trusts flashcards. Was I simply not recalling something I already knew? Did we even learn this in the bar review course?
Screw it, I finally decided, after having wasted ten minutes on the question. I set the booklet aside and hoped that an answer would come to me as I completed the remaining questions.
No such luck.
I returned to the dread corporations question with a mere 20 minutes left in the examination period and this advice from the Barbri lecturers echoing in my head: "If you don't know what the rule is, make one up and apply it!"
But what rule would I make up? As I struggled with THAT question, a vision came to me. It wasn't a Marian apparition; I was visited by Fluffy, Patron Saint of Corporate Law.
Well, it was the best answer I had, seeing as it was the only one relevant to corporate law that I had yet pulled out of the recesses of my brain. So the elements of piercing the corporate veil it was.
I hastily scribbled down my non sequitur answer then, realizing I was utterly defeated, wrote something I'm pretty sure the bar examiners have never encountered in an essay answer.
"I would be sure, however, to inform the buyer that I would need to consult further with an attorney whose grasp of the law concerning business organizations is far superior to mine. Furthermore, I would tell the buyer that I would not even charge it for this consultation session, as I believe it would be unethical to do so, given how remarkably crappy my advice was."
I may have no clue as to how to resolve your legal issue but I sure am ethical! They can give points me points for that, right? No? Oh.
If my corporate law brainfart cost me my licensing, I'll take the bar one more time. Maybe two more times. But no more. As W.C. Fields said, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again. Then give up. There's no use being a damned fool about it."
Or being a professional masochist, à la Paulina Bandy.
They Shoot Law Examinees, Don’t They? (Part I)
Current mood: relieved
Category: Life
Several years ago, when I was a wage slave at Blockbuster, a customer and I got to talking about colleges. After I told him I was attending the University of Louisville, he asked me if I, like his niece, was in a sorority.
I had to restrain myself from crying out, "Fuck no!"
My impression of "Greek" organizations has been informed primarily by all the stories about pledges being forced to do things like eat garbage and do pushups on sewage-flooded floors. But sometimes, my perceptions are incorrect.
My boyfriend - a former frat boy - was incredulous when I recently expressed my belief that shoving broomstick handles up the butts of new pledges was a common fraternity hazing ritual. "Why would anyone want to be friends with people who want to shove broomsticks up their asses?!" he asked, offering that he had merely been grilled on his knowledge of the fraternity with which he had pledged. However, I could swear that I had read an article years ago about a lawsuit that was brought after some fraternity brothers had stuck a broomstick handle up the butt of a pledge, so I went to confirm it via Google.
Silly me - broom-up-the-butt hazing is sohigh school.
Still, the prospect of injurious initiation rites was enough to deter me from joining a sorority in college. Oddly, it failed to keep me away from the legal profession, which has its own hazing ritual: the bar exam.
(Of course, this isn't a picture of an actual bar exam in progress. First, they don't allow cameras in the room. Second, only one guy looks like he's got a job at stake. But multiply the size of this group by about five - that should give you an idea of how many of us were simultaneously freaking out in the freezing ballroom at the Primo West.)
Comparing the bar exam to getting kicked in the balls, a fellow IU law alumnus concluded: "Getting kicked in the balls is $250 cheaper!" Actually, it's more like $3,250 cheaper, if you add in the cost of a bar exam prep course, which most of us sign up for. I would also have to add that getting kicked in the balls is probably less painful, too.
Dude, you are getting no sympathy from me.
For two months, I immersed myself in piles of outlines, stacks of flashcards, brain cell-killing lectures, and practice questions covering 15 subjects, several of which I hadn't encountered in law school, to prepare myself for the dread bar exam: thirteen hours over two days, including one day of doing nothing but handwriting essays for seven hours because the Indiana Board of Law Examiners, in all its wisdom, has decided not to let examinees type their answers.
In addition to hitting a wall late in June, I had several moments like this:
But, fortunately, the openly tolerated form of torture that is the bar exam - and its companion, bar study - is behind me. While other examinees are probably inclined to fret about how they did, I figure that the bar has taken up enough of my summer already - I'm not going to let worrying about it ruin the rest. For now, my priority is gleefully dumping from my brain all the silly mnemonics, songs, and pictures that I've accumulated since May.
The first to go will be a "Kelly"-inspired techno ditty I invented to help me remember the rule regarding wild animals and strict liability. No, I won't share with you. But here, have some "Kelly":
Additionally, I can also forget about Bonnie and Clyde or, as I referred to them:
It was a silly but effective sentence that helped me remember the specific intent property crimes - Burglary, Forgery, Robbery, False Pretenses, Larceny, and Embezzlement.
And last, but not least, are all those damn lolcats, especially this one, courtesy of the boyfriend:
(It relates to the doctrine of "piercing the corporate veil." Don't ask.)
In several decades, the idea of forgetting things will probably scare me, but right now, it looks damn good.
I See a New President in Our Future, Probably Human and With Two Eyes
Category: News and Politics
I'm watching CNN right now and they're running some story on psychics and their predictions for this year's elections.
Of course, consulting tarot cards and crystal balls might not be that silly, given that some undecided voters back in 2004 likely pulled the trigger for the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with. This year's presidential race could come down to something as stupid as your favorite flavor of ice cream.
But "I see a new President"?
Seriously?
So do I!
Because, you know, it's an election year and Bush can't stay in office.
But I'm not done just yet! Among my other predictions:
1) Our new President will be an U.S. citizen. But it won't be Bob Barr.
2) No matter who wins, this election will prove to be a historic one. This is because we will elect either The First Woman President, or The First Black President, or Our Oldest President Ever.
3) The sale of "V" masks will increase slightly - and all because of the Libertarians.
4) Stubbornly Ignorant People will continue to believe that Obama is a Muslim who, if elected, will use his position to destroy his native country.
5) Right-wingers in the blogosphere will also continue to emphasize Obama's middle name and suggest that he is related to Saddam Hussein. Those same people may later come to believe that Ella Fitzgerald was JFK's second cousin.
6) Media coverage of this year's election will contain several references to one or more the following: Rev. Wright, flag pins, poor white people, patriotism, penis size, Betsy Ross. In other words, they'll distract us with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit and coverage will pretty much totally suck.
Just like beer buddy polls and stories about psychics on CNN.
Somewhere in the comments following Supertits -- my most-viewed blog thus far -- I promised more stories on the ups and downs of being single and sex-free. "Celibacy Chronicles," I called them -- a series of my misadventures in dealing with the opposite sex. Wouldn't that be a hoot?
I thought so.
So when the new year rolled around and MSN enticed me into reading an article entitled, "New You, New Love" or some other such silliness, my first thought was "Hells yeah!" I figured that if I acted on some of their astonishingly lame suggestions (seriously, a makeover party where my friends critique me in their secondhands while chowing down on Chinese?) I would have enough entertaining blog material to last me at least through January.
First, I spent a few days mentally gearing up for my first task: the bookstore flirting session. (Yes, days. I have a shyness problem and I'm terrible at approaching people.) My job was to stand in a section I might not even have an interest in -- say, the law -- then attack a hapless fellow with a silly pickup line. I could only imagine how that would go.
Me: "Hi, I'm trying to find a birthday present for my brother and it looks like you two share the same interests. Could you recommend a book you think he might like?"*
Hapless Fellow: "Uh... (Points to some book.) That's pretty good."
Me: "Thanks! (Awkward pause.) Actually, that was a total lie. My brother's birthday isn't until August and he doesn't even read. (Moving on to the follow-up.) Care to move over to the Starbucks with me so I can tell you some more lies over a ridiculously priced cup of coffee?"
Indeed, I could only imagine. Before I set off in pursuit of new misadventures to blog about, something happened. Something terrible happened.
A fellow law student asked me out. We went on our first date, fell hard, and I moved in with him -- within the span of a week. That's the story in a nutshell. And that is why I haven't posted anything in about three months. I've been in a nauseatingly lovey-dovey state with said law student, nearly 24/7.
Go ahead. Boo me. I deserve it. Dasunrisin has already 'complained' about my lack of blog posts. And the uncharacteristic lack of snark in my last one.
You will be relieved to know, however, that snark and sarcasm are two things that remain near and dear to me and that my fellow law student, hereafter referred to as simply "3L" for the sake of maintaining his anonymity, has helped keep them at high levels.
3L: (Reading "67 New Blow-His-Mind Moves" from May's Cosmo.**) "Number 16. 'This one girl wouldn't let me manually guide my shaft into her, so I had to navigate without using any hands.' (Several 'moves' later.) Number 23. 'If a girl pins down my arms with her hands while she rides me, I feel like a rock star. It's like she needs (loudly) 100 percent of my penis, with no interruptions allowed.'"
Me: "Rock star?!"
3L: "A hundred percent?! You know, it would be funny if some dude said, 'You know, you're only getting 75% tonight. The other 25? Nope.'"
Me: Then the girl should say, 'Fine then. But you can't use your hands to guide it in.'"
3L: "Then the girl shouldn't be surprised if he misses and hits her in the face with it."
Of course, now that I'm coupled up with 3L, there shall be no "Celibacy Chronicles." But with such repartee, who needs 'em? So screw MSN's article and its lame suggestions for finding love.
Next assignment: Following Cosmo's lame suggestions for "Feel[ing] Sexier In Your Skin" ...
* Lame line courtesy of aforementioned article. ** Yes, I purchased Cosmo (come on, Kristen Bell's the covergirl) and, yes, he gave me shit about it. In fact, part of him 'giving me shit' consisted of reading the most ridiculous parts out loud to me.
As I sat down to write this, I planned to express my disappointment with myself for not having said something vaguely intelligent about the presidential candidate madness that is swirling around us. Were this all happening a few years ago, I would certainly have chimed in by now and offered a strong endorsement. But this isn't years ago. This is now. And now, I kind of don't care.
During my time as an undergrad, I never failed to keep abreast of the political news (a good idea for a political science major, methinks) and was fairly active -- as a letter writer, marching placard-waver, and campaign worker.
(I worked the phones for Jack Conway, on the far right. Sadly, Jack was not as progressive a candidate as I would have liked, but I really hated incumbent Anne Northup.)
There was always something I was hopping mad about, whether it be energy policy, our impact on the environment, contraception, or trade agreements, so I didn't really understand people who were apathetic toward politics. I didn't get people who refused to even register to vote because they didn't like any of the candidates.
But after years of not seeing any improvements in the areas where I wanted them, after stacks of letters that failed to change any of my representatives' minds, after not seeing the guys I was rooting for win, I became one of Those People.
Oddly, it wasn't until I stopped caring that people came to see my point of view. Maybe I'm just ahead of my time. Whatever.
My point is, there's a lot going on out there that I SHOULD be commenting on, but I just don't feel like it. In fact, I'm really not much for words right now. So these are the things I want to comment on, Ebert and Roeper style:
Mike Huckabee
Kandinsky paintings A few people have commented on my profile background; it's a piece by Kandinsky, entitled "Yellow, Red, Blue."
Annie Leibovitz photos
The Brat Pack
Feist's videos. I am especially loving "1234," which makes me think of a dancing box of crayons.
Purple Rain, the soundtrack
Stella Artois
Latin dancing.
Hot.
Hillary
Cats
The Twat Pack
Gas prices
Purple Rain, the movie
Pervez Musharraf (Do I even need to explain why?)
Tila Tequila
Freakdancing "Dancing," for people who can't really dance.
"I don't do relationships," I tell new acquaintances who wonder why I am unattached. "Bad experience?" they invariably ask. I nod my head. "String of 'em," I explain.
Maybe, someday, Britt Daniel will come a-knockin' at my door and I'll change my mind but until then, I am to relationships what Mitt Romney was to pardons and commutations.
This does not mean that I've taken up casual sex as a replacement, though. In a move that would make Dubya proud (yes, I cringed a little, typing that) I've taken a vow of -- brace yourself, kids -- abstinence.
At first, it was involuntary but now I see it as a challenge to be extended for as long as possible. It's also something that keeps me from waking up next to some syphilis carrier I met the night before and screwed out of sheer desperation. Now, I realize some people might dig that and even consider it to be the definition of "a good time," but me? I prefer not to risk it. Even if the male, STD version of Typhoid Mary turns out to be a hip-swiveling blonde beanstalk.
What makes it difficult to stick to the game plan, though, is the fact that I vacillate between being resolute and being itchy enough to tear off my jeans and do it in the nearest public restroom with the first mildy attractive potential syphilis carrier who shows any sign of interest. More often than not, though, I lean toward "itchy," so I have to avoid situations where I might actually break. This means steering clear of places where there's a chance I might get hit on and making sure I'm well-stocked with contrasexion: granny panties and abundant body hair. (Sorry about that mental image.)
I figure the combination of the two will be sufficient to keep anyone from even wanting to stick it in me. Boy, was I wrong.
Maybe I'm naive, but I figured that the best place for a woman to avoid getting hit on would be a gay bar but last summer, I was offered "a night of satisfaction." By a straight guy. When the fuck did skeevy hetero men start going out to gay bars?!
I also didn't expect them to be at karaoke bars either because, let's face it, most guys who do go to karaoke bars are probably gay or, if they're straight, were dragged there by their female friends and are somewhat meek. My luck being what it is, though, I met one of Those Guys last night. I actually let him keep his hand on my knee through painful renditions of Salt-n-Pepa songs but in my defense, he was cute, amusing, and rather charming -- at first. And then came his sixth beer of the evening and this gem: "You know what's wrong with this picture? Our clothes are still on!" I revealed that I had made a deliberate choice not to remove any body hair for the last month (my apologies to anyone who felt the need to ralph right then) and even THAT didn't deter him. "I don't get why people are trying to knock Sasquatch," he slurred. At that point, I figured that even the "I'm on the rag" excuse, delivered in my typical blunt fashion ("Dude, I'm bleeding like a stuck pig from my vag!"), would be futile. I finished a bottle of water, confident that I would soon be able to drive home, as he downed a seventh beer and insisted that I come over to his place for sex. "We'd have some really goodlooking kids," he mused drunkenly. (I felt the need to ralph right then.)
So a mousy wallflower like me manages to get hit on rather crudely at establishments where she doesn't expect there to be any men cruising for hetero sex and is pressed for sex even after she declares that her lady garden is the size of a slice of New York pizza.
Sorry. Here, take one of these.
You know why this happens? Supertits. They're my foil.
Yes, both times, I was wearing my Victoria's Secret Very Sexy Infinity Edge Push Up Bra. (There was also alcohol and karaoke involved both times as well, but I don't think those were factors in my being hit on.) I suppose it's just common sense that, if you don't want to get hit on, don't wear anything "Very Sexy." Of course the bra doesn't magically transform me into Adriana Lima but it does create the illusion of a heaving bosom in place of my ironing board chest. I am convinced that these Supertits act as magnets for horny duds. When I go sans bra, I get no attention from men unless it's online. OK, that's not really true. One time, I was wearing my black skirt suit and got a "Damn baby, you can be my lawyer!" (To which I shot back, "I don't represent juvenile delinquents!") For the most part, though, the creeps leave me alone. But when I'm sporting Supertits? Whole different story.
Hetero Gay-Club Partier, for example, made a point of complimenting my "nice, perky breasts."
So why do I keep my Victoria's Secret Very Sexy Infinity Edge Push Up Bra (hereafter known as VSVSIEPUB)?
Hetero Gay-Club Partier: "Damn, baby. What are you? A C?" Me: "Uh uh. They're fake."
You see, the VSVSIEPUB comes with gel inserts. These cousins of the infamous "chicken cutlets" add to the illusion of Supertits. They also add to my amusement. After a guy expresses disbelief at my revelation, I get to nonchalantly reach into my bra, pull out the inserts and chuck those suckers at the dude's face while crowing, "Yup! Fake!" How do you like them apples?
I've done it, too.
The looks on these guys' faces are absolutely priceless -- and this is why, despite being my foil, I cannot bear to part with my Supertits.
I guess if I'm willing to forgo the joy of throwing gel inserts at strangers and seriously want to avoid falling prey to a Lothario hellbent on breaking my will, I'll have to settle for a pair of band aids to hold up the mosquito bites I call boobs and restrict my partying to the alcohol and karaoke-free produce section at Whole Foods. But you know that with my luck, I'll probably run into some vegetarian with a lame-ass line like, "I don't eat meat, but I love eating women!"
Christmas -- Now With 65% More Irritating Perkiness (and Poor Sentence Construction)!!!!!!!!!
Category: Life
I have them. You probably have them. Just about everyone, I think, has them.
No, no, no. Not herpes.
I'm talking about relatives who send out cheesy newsletters to every living branch of the family tree at Christmastime. You know what I'm talking about. They usually begin with an impersonal "Dear Family and Friends," proceed to a series of vignettes in chronological order, display flagrant disregard for the rules of grammar and punctuation, and are saturated with so much bubbly enthusiasm that you wonder if the the family exists in a cocoon of delusional happiness or simply manages to avoid bad news.
There is usually a family portrait enclosed as well. Normally, you toss this into some pile of photographs that you've been meaning to place in photo albums since 1994, but if somebody looks constipated or bewildered -- or like a zombie -- then you and your dad place it on the freezer door and laugh at it anytime you go to retrieve something from the refrigerator.
(And then you agree that you're both going to hell for making fun of an eight year old.)
The very sight of the envelope in your mailbox makes you wish you were Jewish. You know Jews don't send these things to their families at Hanukkah. The Jewish people have a long history of suffering and they're certainly not eager to add to it. You're not Jewish, though, and you know you will continue getting the damn things until someone dies or, like my dad, you work up the courage to say: "Susan, quit sending me these silly newsletters!" But chances are pretty good that no one's croaking anytime soon and, frankly, you don't have the heart to send your cousin a cease-and-desist letter. So what do you do? You could just grin and bear it. Or, you could try to get in on the fun by composing a family newsletter of your own.
For your entertainment, I give you the year-end update on the Sellers family, as written by my dad and myself. I realize that David Sedaris has beaten me to the punch, but this is OUR newsletter, dammit. Feel free to make necessary alterations and mail it out to your own relatives.
Dear Family and Friends,
you knew this was coming!!!!! It's the holiday season now, which means -- TIME FOR THE SELLERS FAMILY NEWSLETTER!!!!! We hope you are all in good health and are enjoying this time of year as much as we are. God knows we certainly have much to celebrate!! The year started off a bit rough but we've pulled together and gotten through and we're all alive and have managed to not kill each other!
We always thought it might be nice to ring in the New Year in a warmer climate, so in January, we packed our bags and headed to Cancun!!! Courtesy of frequent flier miles and priceline. Unfortunately, Mom got a really bad case of Montezuma's revenge. It almost ruined our whole trip. :( We went to the beach a whole lot -- something you don't do AT ALL in Kentucky. Of course Mom couldn't join us because of her diarrhea, but she still managed to enjoy herself. She watched a whole lot of Mexican soap operas and can now tell us in fluent Spanish that she cannot possibly be Carlos's biological father and how she never really loved Luisa.
While we were all marveling over her new bilinguitybilinguisticness ability to speak a second language, we received some very unfortunate news. Apparently, the guys at ICE got word that Will failed to renew his green card and held him up when he was returning from a trip back home. But, you know Will and His Temper. If ICE was going to make life difficult for him, he would do the same -- and landed a couple of blows to the officials' heads, knocking 'em out cold. He has since been deported back to the Philippines. The good news out of this story is that his former in-laws can't interfere with his life anymore (hooray!!!!!!!) and Congress doesn't have a child support enforcement treaty with that country. Ha ha ha!!!! (Whoops. I have just been sternly informed that this is not a laughing matter.)
As you all know, April is in her third year of law school. We are all very proud of her. We don't know exactly what she's doing since we hear from her maybe once every six weeks but we did learn from her roommate (who we sometimes call to ask if April is still alive) that she has "kind of" developed a cocaine addiction that has made her "very difficult to live with." Well, April's pessimism has always made her difficult to live with (just ask her former roommate -- her sister Chrissie!) but from what Dad's found on the interwebs, pessimism and drug abuse are common among lawyers, so I guess April has just found a group of people she fits in with. Finally!!!!!
Speaking of Chrissie, things are going remarkably well between her and the rest of the family. A few years ago, she was dating this real douchebag that none of us took a liking too and it was a sore spot for everyone. Fortunately, she kicked him to the curb and is now married to a wonderful guy named Rob whom she met in California last June during her trip to get her breast implants. We did have some worries at first. They got married in Las Vegas just a few weeks after meeting, then got divorced a few weeks after THAT. According to Chrissie, there was a misunderstanding about the number of kids Rob had. He initially told her that he only had three, conveniently leaving out the fact that his most recent ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his fourth -- can you IMAGINE???!!!!! But Chrissie and Rob were able to put this behind them and patch things up after finding out that Rob's ex had had a miscarriage so, in reality, he DID only have three kids. The couple hit a bit of a rough patch on Halloween when Rob became upset with Chrissie's costume. She refuses to discuss it and won't even tell us what the costume was but from her best friend's MySpace page, it appears that she went as a porn star with an eye patch and shredded skirt. In any case, the kids re-married before Thanksgiving. We couldn't be happier for the girl. Rob does truly seem like a very patient and caring guy and he's always current on his child support payments, so he's responsible too!!!!
Sadly, Dad will not be joining us for Christmas this year. Or for the next thirty years, if his sentence stands. For those of you who haven't seen him in a long time and are curious as to what he's looking like these days, tune into "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" on December 21st on NBC. Aside from that, though, his year hasn't been too bad. He managed to get a nice tan during our trip to Cancun (amazing, considering that he could usually give Casper the Ghost a run for his money!!!!) and has sharpened his computer skills. He knows how to use something called PhotoShop(?) and knows how to download programs that help him use the interweb, like Instant Messenger. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!!!!! (Unfortunately, the computer was seized by police, which is why this letter is handwritten -- sorry!!) :(
Here's hoping that your family is blessed during the holiday season!! We look forward to hearing from all of you, our dear friends and family!!!!!!!
relieved
amused
