Something about me

Today, I had yet another student come by the office, this one, Claudia, to pick up a sponsorship check for her exchange program to China this year. I had met her when I was the visiting lecturer in the UTPA Business Law Class and we have stayed in touch. She recently showed up at the office raising funds for her trip. Since I had a good exchange program experience, I was of course happy to help.

So in the last few weeks (December and January) I've helped a number of students with jobs, recommendation letter, scholarship funds, career advice, actual work and so forth. It's quite an abundance of riches of sorts. One of the students, Luciana, is very accomplished, a Harvard student. I was telling Susan, that of all of the adults, teachers, professors, etc. she knows, she came to me for her recommendation letter. Even Susan was a bit puzzled by that :)

I guess I've got the Je Ne Sais Quoi!

A big day

I was up early today to go on a 2 hour bike ride. It was windy and the Maniacs were riding hard and I was pretty tired and happy to finish. Getting home, I checked and Sarah and Jack and Susan were going to lunch at my favorite place, Jason's so I joined them. That was fun.

Then afterwards, I went to the car show at the McAllen Convention Center. Made me ready to go Corvette driving - that's tomorrow. Afterwards, I headed home for a nice nap. Then Susan and I had dinner at home and watched the movie 50/50 which we both liked.

Friday night

Its been a busy week and I've been looking forward to having a night at home, so here it is. It's been nice to have dinner and fall asleep on the couch watching TV. Now I'm awake.

Tomorrow I'm set for a 2 hour bike ride and then the McAllen Car Show is going on. I tried to get our Friend to put some of his old cars in the show, but I think he was a bit embarrassed that they were not in tip top shape. I am planning to drive the Corvette on Sunday to do my part to keep that fine car running well.

My friend Mark is putting his 66 Corvette in the car show and he is now determined to drive it more regularly. So I said I'd help him out in that respect. We have a tentative deal to exchange cars for a day.

Next week will have a few vacation days, Wed through Friday and then to the weekend in Salt Lake City. Since I didn't get to go last year, I'm looking forward to this year. The snow report is looking good. Plus I've arranged that we can have dinner at a Diners, Drive-In's and Dives place, the Red Iguana. And pizza at The Pie. So I've learned from the best: if you're going to fly your plane somewhere, you'd better be prepared as to where you're going to eat.

Notes from October jury duty

Here are my notes from jury duty:

Why does it take half a day to pick a jury?

Why does a 1 witness case need a trial? A: that's all they've got

10 minute voir dire when the judge gave 30 minutes?

No juror chart? No names?

attorneys seemed/were inexperienced

24 person panel

no questions for strike for cause purposes

Ususally I hone in on 6-7 people and try and find out about them from the people sitting next to them

Saturday Jan 7

It is the first Saturday of this first week of my new workout regimen. So far, this M/W/F, I have not been sore, but on Friday night I was quite tired at 8:45 when I was at the Vipers game. So I had decided to take it easy today.

I wanted to get outside a bit since it was a nice day of 78 degrees, but also wanted to be home and watch the Texans v. Bengals. And I got both done. So far the game has been very good. And we also played 7 1/2 holes of golf but it was very crowded. Still fun to be outside.

New Years Day 2012

It's the new status symbol to brag about how early you went to bed on New Year's Eve. This last one, I got to bed at 10:30 pm. Meanwhile Sarah stayed out late ringing in the New Year. As a result I got up pretty early on New Year's Day which was also Sunday so I started off the year in church.

In the afternoon, I decided to go for a drive. So I went to pick up the Corvette and.. it wouldn't start. I had told my friend Bennett that we'd go driving so I went with the Shelby. Bennett is single and lives alone, so he always seems to like company. He of course liked the car, and while we were driving said we should go charge the Corvetter with his charger. So we ended up getting back and charging and starting it! Score. We then went for a good drive and finished up about 10 pm. I didn't really mean to be gone that long but we did have a long and succesful trip.

A good way to start the year - having fun while solving problems.

Christmas Tree Fort

Taking out the Christmas tree today reminded me of a Briargrove memory: the Christmas Tree Fort.

After Christmas, people put out their trees on the curb. Our gang of neighborhood kids then went around and gathered up the trees. I think we had 8 or 9 of them. Then we dragged all of them into our yard and circled them up to create a fort. From there we had a nice fort from which to play our war games.

Now if you imagine how dried up one tree might become after Christmas, think of how 9 of them looked. Then you could imagine when my parents came home and were none too impressed at the whole's street's garage in our front yard. They just didn't understand the fun.

The trees were quickly dispersed as soon as they got there. But that fort was sure a fun afternoon.