Hello world, it's been a while

I just got done with the most stressful and horrifying test imaginable; the bar exam. I still won't know how I did for a couple weeks, but I am glad that is over! While it was stressful and difficult, I felt prepared (knock on wood), but we will just have to wait and see.

Now on to the job hunt! I have a couple interviews, and have been networking a lot. Both to get to know people in the field and to learn more about the field. I talked to an estate planning and business attorney today and it was very helpful and interesting.

Oh, right. Another reason I havnt blogged in a while is that my wife and I were in a terrible car accident. In eastern Oregon, our car was blown off the road by wind, and the car rolled. My wife broke two vertebrae in her neck and underwent emergency surgery to fuse them after being flown to a hostipal with the right specialists. It was a very frightening time, but she had recovered very well considering it was less than 5 months ago! There is still pain ligering, but we are hoping that will go away; the Dr said it was going to be there for 6 months or so. She just finished her last rehab appointment, and, when not in too much pain, is looking forward to moving on and back into normal life. Whatever "normal" is.

We saw Connie and Carla last night, and the commentary by Nia Vardalos was hilarious! She mentions how she hates the word "normal", and I'd have to agree.

Career? What's that?

So lately Ive been focusing on what I am going to do... you know... as a living. I have also been trying to improve my skills in many respects so that once I get there I will be valuable. I am taking classes that will be directly applicable to my career choice as a business and estate planning attorney, but that also makes for a very difficult last semester. In addition, I dont want to close any doors on the business side of things since I may also jump at a chance to get into certain accounting or finance jobs, like financial analyst or some auditing jobs. I have heard many times over that it is generally a better plan to do law first and then move into business if you are unsure what you want to do. I think I would be happy in either field, but the right legal position would probably be best.

I am also improving my skills to dress well. I know that I need to look professional, but I dont own a suit, just sports jackets for the most part. My nice pants are also slowly destroying themselves (I swear I had nothing to do with it). Today I went to a "Dress for Success" law school event at Nordstrom, and I learned a bit about fashion, but I still dont own anything fantastic. I think this weekend I will go get a suit. That is the first thing so I can look professional in interviews.

Oh, and I went to a few career fairs last weekend too. An MBA Career fair and a public interest career fair. They were both pretty helpful in finding more possibilities, but I would really like to narrow the choices down a bit... But I suppose as I have been and will continue to apply for jobs, the choices will narrow themselves down as I get rejections! Until BAM perfect career. right?

Hello world! Merry Christmas, Happy New Years, Happy Holidays, etc!

Xmas was great this year! We had all the family over except for Sarah who has been in Ghana for a few weeks and I believe is there for another week still. You can see her blog here: http://sarahbearinghana.blogspot.com/ Here is a picture of everyone at xmas including Sarah (via satellite):

It was lots of fun! The fam-damnly cooked yummy pies!

We also took a FREEZING walk down by the river, but sadly, the carousel was closed.

It was serious fun hanging out with everyone! We had a great xmas (which we held on the 23rd since people had to work on the 24th and 25th). Then on the 26th, Molly, Alexia, Katy and I all went to Edgefield. Unfortunately I have no pictures from this trip, but it was simply a great time with lots of great seasonal beers and pizza and such.

Happy New Years to you all! Dont forget to give yourself a new year resolution, otherwise you will not have anything to break later in the year. Honestly though, the best most of us can hope for is to keep out reolutions throughout most of the year. Hell, even 3 months would probably be a long time to keep promises to ourselves!

Brick Con 2007

Brick Con = Northwest Lego Convention

Katy and I went there this weekend. It took place in Seattle, and was SO FRIGGIN AWESOME!! It was at the Seattle Center (same place as the Space Needle and some museums and carnival). So here is the down low for the Brick Con; there were two big rooms, one full of creations by builders, and another full of merchants. The merchants had lots of bulk legos as well as lego brand sets, some tables for kids to build stuff, and BrickArms, a company that makes their own new pieces, based on a war theme. We of course checked out the bulk section (fill a bag for $5).


The display room had SO much cool stuff!!



First was a whole lot of flat legos making pictures such as a star wars poster, a beer advertisement, a poster of the V For Vendetta guy, and much more! (see picture for a Van Gogh - here is a link to the real thing for comparison http://www.latifm.com/artists/image/van-gogh-vincent-cafe-de-nuit2.jpg)



There were huge cities with trains, off shore drilling rigs, street cars, starbucks (of course), a huge train station, sky scrapers, and trailer parks. Actually there was at least one Starbucks in every display - even the Knights Vs Skeletons and Space displays! It was kind of a reoccuring joke there.


We also talked with some guys - one of them made this HUGE castle, complete with rooms inside, a large throne, dragons, and an army. The castle came apart into around 5 pieces so it could be carried around without a forklift. There was also the Titanic, complete with Lego Lionardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet on the tip; "Im flying". It was about 20 feet long or so - HUGE!!


There was a working clock made out of legos, a 10 foot tall totem pole, and life size sculptures of Legos. There were towers, mecha-godzillas, Aliens, dozens of pirate ships, legos that used artificial intelligence to draw, move, and organize. There was a skeleton army, a 3 foot Milenum Falcon (from the set I think), a tower taller than me, and lots more.



There were events such as racing where they roll vehicles of participants down a ramp and see whose car goes the farthest, and whose driver goes the farthest. That was amusing because some vehicles were actually meant more to launch the drivers than actually roll far. There were also speakers from Denmark, and discussions with other builders.


Basically, it was fun, and it got us REALLY wanting to build, but we will have to wait until we have some time. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this post as much as we enjoyed Seattle. By the way, Seattle Center is AWESOME, especially if you take the monorail down to the mall - all Seattle is open to you!

Dreams

My mom has a thing for dreams. She really truly enjoys hearing about them, and I had one recently I wanted to share. Now normally, I dont think very deeply into dreams, but this one had too many aspects that reflected reality, so I will share those with you as well.

The dream had two parts - the first part was fun but meaningless, like most of my dreams. It involved me as a character of the TV series "Heroes", and I was fighting the bad guy, Sylar. Then with no transition that I can remember, I was suddenly on a boardwalk walking next to a beach by myself. Many of my family and friends were there at the beach, but I couldnt see any of them. Suddenly, there was a tidal wave - a small but realistic one where it's all white wash, but it just sweeps over the beach - and, not knowing what to do, I laid down on the sand next to a palm tree and held on. It receded quickly, but was soon followed by another, larger wave, this one and the rest more like the one in the picture. I acted in the same way, and laid down holding on to a palm tree. After this one subsided (again, rather quickly) I looked around to see where my family was. Only a few feet away was my mom with her camera out, trying to take a picture of this 100-foot wave about to crash over us. She was using her old camera, which seemed to take forever to take pictures, so she was struggling trying to get a shot. Just before the wave hit, she had to put the camera down so she could put her shoulder into the wave - the 100 foot wave - so she wouldnt get washed away. And soon after that wave disappeared, she was still there. Suddenly, another wave came from the right, then another from behind, where the city used to be visible before the wave covered it up. Then looking to the left I saw My sisters and Father running on a slightly elevated part of the beach, just as a very fast and menacing looking wave rushed out from the city streets behind them, but, despite the fact that it was nearly 100 feet tall as well, it went right past them staying on the lower portion of the beach. At this point, I had gained some courage, and was also taking on the waves standing up. Finally, after too many waves to count, I woke up.

What does it all mean!? Life hits you and everyone around you with wave after wave of challenges and hardship. Everyone is affected by challenges. Some affect everyone, some only certain people. You are never alone, and even if your family is partially split up, and far away with their own challenges, they will get through theirs just fine. Their successes and your own during challenging times will increase your confidence and allow you to take these challenges standing up, thereby not getting sand in places you dont want it. Also, dont forget how important it is, even when you are faced with a 100 foot wall of water, to stop and enjoy the scenery and the sites. After all, when is the next time you will get to see a huge wall of water that close up?

Face your challenges head on, enjoy life, and dont forget about your family. I love you guys.

Hooray!

I passed the MPRE! I walked out of the test (in August) feeling very hesitant, but I did great! Also, I want to do a shout out to my peep over in Idaho. She passed the bar!

Yup, we are totally rockin it!

I also have a few job interviews coming up... wish me luck!

and a side note: Hooray for no Biz Org today!

Hooray for pork chop dinners!

Hoo... ray.

How to piss off postal workers

I had a job application that I had to send overnight, so I put it in a manilla envelope, sealed it, and headed to the post office. I had just gotten off work, and only had 15 minutes to walk/run across campus to get to by car, and then drive like a bat-outa-hell to get there a few minutes before they closed. I was the second to last person in line before they locked the doors. I finally got to the front of the line, asked for delivery guaranteed by Friday, and he told me I needed to use express mail, which had it's own envelope. Now for some reason they made the express mail envelope an inch smaller than a manilla envelope in all dimensions. I started to try and fold the corners of the envelope without folding the materials inside, and in the mean time gave him my credit card to pay for the postage. I decided that I should just rip open the manilla envelope and put the materials directly into the express mail envelope. So I first opened the metal clasps holding the middle of the manilla envelope and then ripped open the seal... and blood started pooring out of my finger and onto the envelopes. I had cut it on the metal clasp! So now I got several people in the back running around looking for a paper towel and a bandaid, and now there was blood on the envelope that he had just put postage on. This meant he had to issue a refund and then buy the postage again... which he didnt know how to do, so he needed help. In the mean time someone else had carefully picked up the bloody envelope and put it in a hazardous material bag. But of course they needed the old postage to issue the refund, so they needed to get it out again and get the postage off it. Finally, about 20 minutes after they closed, they finished my "simple" transaction which should have taken only about 2 minutes. Sorry, no pictures to post of this event!