Better News

Hey all.  Just thought I’d write to let you know a few pieces of good news.  Fist–Zeph’s shoulders are fine.  They look kind of funny, but they’re nothing to be concerned about.  Our little angel was just meant to have wings.

Second, I have a job.  I’m working in the big, blue, Bank of America building by Fiesta Mall.  It’s nice and close.  It’s giving me some good experience in the field, and it’s nice and close to home.  I can even go home and have lunch with my wife on my lunch hours–when she’s actually home, I guess.

Anyhow, I’m done with the semester–I even finished the law journal write on, so we’ll see if I make it by late July.  So feel free to drop me a line.  I might actually have time occasionally

More Trouble

Ahhhhhhhh, cars. I remember now why I like to buy new cars: You start out with a warranty, and you know how well it’s been maintained for its entire life. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I bought a used car to replace the dear late Bessie (the Hyundai Accent we’ve had since before we were married). We bought a Plymouth Breeze that had fewer miles on her, and we knew the previous owner. On top of that, we dropped an extra $850 in repairs on her to make sure she kept running for awhile.

Anyways the battery died. I couldn’t find the damn thing for the life of me, and I hadn’t gotten an owner’s manual with the car. So I looked online and apparently the battery is in the wheel well. Yeah, that’s not a typo–you have to take off the tire and remove a panel to get the most-often-replaced part ever (at least in the desert) out of the damn car. If that weren’t bad enough, when Ijacked it up and removed the tire cover, I found thattwo of the lugnuts were stripped and I couldn’t get the damn tire off. So I picked up a portable jumper and drove it a couple times to try to get me through finals until I had a chance to get it to a mechanic or Discount tire to replace the stripped lugnuts or something.

After my final last Tuesday the engine light came on. I wanted to take a baseball bat to the demonspawn, but couldn’t bring myself to do it after all the cash I had already dropped on it. My student loans are wearing quite thin at this point.

Freaks with wings

So a little upate on the job front–Zephyr has decided to grow wings:

His shoulders do that everytime his arms go above his shoulders. Our pediatrician said he hadn’t seen anythimg like it in his 30+ years of practice. Anyhow, we’re not sure what, if any, treatment is going to be required, and since we lose our nice insurance if I earn too much money (I know, bass-ackwards ain’t it), I’ve kind of put the job hunt on hold. I’m trying to get a part-time externship for now. I can’t afford to pay for school credit for it, but the experience would be good, and it might help me get something better in the fall. Anyhow, this kind of explains why a guy in the top 5% of his law school class couldn’t find a job–I needed to remain unemployed for my boy. I can accept that. I guess things do happen for a reason . . .

Freedom!

I finished my last final yesterday. I am officially done with my first year of law school. Don’t ask me how I did, because I will have no idea until at least mid-July. The best I can hope for is an idea of my final grade in Legal Writing and a hint of how I did in Law in the Regulatory State. Anyhow, no more classes, no more books, no more Clinton’s dirty looks. That makes me a happy man.

So I’ve decided to try this stop smoking program my mom sent me now that I’m done with finals. I don’t know how wise that is since I’m going to be trying to write on to ASU Law Journal this weekend, but hey–it’s worth a shot. That would be why I’m up at 3:30 in the morning; any regular smoker who has tried to quit knows exactly what I’m talking about here. The program has a lot of hogwash about fresh vegetables, cinnamon mouthwash (which is nearly imppossible to find) and grapefruit juice. It’s supposed to help reduce cravings, but it doesn’t work at all. The most effective part of the program so far is writing and signing a “declaration of independence” from smoking where you promise your family and friends that you are strong enough to quit smoking. I haven’t broken my word in over 7 years, and I don’t particularly want to break that record. Normally, I wouldn’t make a promise I couldn’t keep, but now that I have I don’t want to break it.

Another helpful part is the signs. They tell you to put signs up everywhere to remind you that you’ve quit (like the mad cravings every 4 minutes don’t remind you ). Brie and Connor made a bunch of creative signs for me and hung them everywhere; there is even on on my laptop right now. So now if I smoke, all that hard work will have been in vain. The guilt helps (maybe the Catholics are on to something).

We’ll see tomorrow how the “no coffee, tea or alcohol” requirement will go. I get the logic behind it, but I’m not looking forward to the morning with no coffee, especially since I’ve been wide awake since 2:30. I think I may have to cheat and have some “Detox Tea” to help get the nicotine out of my system a little faster. I don’t drink it often enough for there to be a conditioned response to crave a cigarette, like there woul be with my coffee.

Anyhow, wish me luck!