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!

Milord

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New Pictures and an Update

I know it’s been forever since I’ve written. To make up for it, I have posted new pictures in the pictures section.

For those who don’t know, I totalled my car in January (R.I.P. Bessie). On the bright side, I bought a used Plymouth Breeze. Unfortunately, I just had to drop an extra $850 on a mechanic to make sure it doesn’t break any time soon. That’s what you get when you buy from a friend of the family and take his word that he had a mechanic check it out.

Zephyr’s getting huge, as you can tell by the new pictures. You’d never guess he was born a six pound nothing. He’s scooting like a champ and really wants to learn how to stand. You can check out some videos at http://zephyrproffitt.com.

Connor is at a new school (again) and gets to be in class with three of his cousins now. He loves it, and he’s really a great kid. Now if only I could get him to sit still when he’s not playing video games.

That’s all for now. Finals are coming up in two weeks, and I have a midterm and a paper before then, so you probably won’t hear from me for awhile.

New Pictures

Hey all. There’s a couple new spreads in my pictures section. I put up a few from our summer trip to California, and a whole bunch from our trip to Disneyland. You can click on the pictures link in the navbar to your left or just click the link above.

Darn Quizzes

Much like my brother, I am a quiz addict (see prior posts). The most recent is which supervillain am I. I kinda like the result

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

Apocalypse 69% Dr. Doom 68% Magneto 65% Two-Face 61% Poison Ivy 60% Dark Phoenix 57% Mr. Freeze 57% Lex Luthor 55% Venom 52% Juggernaut 49% The Joker 48% Green Goblin 45% Mystique 45% Catwoman 41% Riddler 30% Kingpin 28%

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.

Click here to take the “Which Super Villain am I?” quiz…

Grades

My grades posted on Saturday.  I don’t want to feel too much like a braggart, so I’ll just say this:

Sandra Day O’Connor only gives class ranks to those in the top third of the class.  I should be getting my class rank in the mail pretty soon.

Illness in the home

I don’t know what’s going on lately. First, Zephyr gets sick. He can’t breathe and has this horrible hacking cough. The only thing worse than watching him hack up a lung is watching his swallow the gunk as soon as he’s done. The next day, Connor has a neck to toes rash. I guess the timing wasn’t too bad, since I only had to make one trip to the doctor come monday. Fortunately, Zeph’s illness isn’t anything more serious than a bad chest cold. Still, it’s a week later and he still has a hard time breathing, sounds like he has Emphysema and screams a few hours each day when he gets frustrated from being sick. At least he doesn’t have a fever or anything.

Connor’s is a bit more of an enigma. The doc said it’s an allergic reaction, and probably a skin allergy (as opposed to a food allergy) since he doesn’t have any hives on his face. Still, we switched to a no-additive detergent and washed all his clothes a week ago, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. We’ll have to try narrowing it down to a specific fabric if it keeps up. I hope it’s not Cotton.

TO make things worse, Brie threw her back out somehow this morning. She can’t hardly get out of bed. The gods must be angry about something. Anyhow, I’ll keep you all posted.

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 – 1873)