the thin line between optimism and delusion…

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.  It is very cold and rainy here. 

I am so unbelievable unproductive – it is almost painful. 

For better or worse, it all has to be finished in the next 24 hours. 

Wish me luck – keep me in your prayers – send me emails – don’t expect me to respond – and try to stay warm and dry!

But don’t feel bad for me – this is all my fault and I’m ready to take full responsibility and accept the consequences of my poor preparation. 

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My dogs think they are humans. 

Aluminum foil never gets hot enough to burn you.  You can take aluminum foil out of the oven with your hands.  Just make sure you don’t touch any other metal surface in the oven.

Kosher Salt makes every dish taste better.  Even cookies.  Seriously, I know it sounds weird, but it is true.  Use Kosher salt in your next dish.  Barefoot Contessa swears by it, and now we do too. 

Staring out the window does not constitute studying. 

Neither does searching through old novels looking for very important quotes you can’t remember the exact words too. 

It is always more enjoyable to shave your legs in the bathtub. 

The Savannah River looked beautiful on Thursday. 

My favorite dish of this thanksgiving was the squash casserole my mom cooked. 

The sugar cookies I made in the shape of turkeys sure were tasty.  And the icing ended up looking great. 

I really have a lot of wonderful friends – not to mention an amazing family.

I hate real estate transactions.  And arbitration.  And, all of my other classes.   

There are so many movies I want to go see – but I just really don’t have time right now.  Sucks. 

Maybe if I was more productive, I would have more time. 

I’m not even going to get into all the work I need to do this week, just know that I will eventually get it done, and when I do get it done, I have a great reward. 

I’m not sure if I’ve told y’all about this yet.   

I haven’t had time to think about it really. 

Are y’all getting excited about what I might be doing after I finish my exams?

My family is going to Chile!

Isn’t that craziness?

We are going to Santiago and to Vina Del Mar – which is the Riviera wine country. 

!!!!!!!!!!!

I finish my exams on the 9th, and we leave on the 10th.  And!  And!  It will be summertime there!! 

AAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!  I’M SO EXCITED!!!

Anyone ever been to Chile?  Suggestions?  Things I must look for?  Things not to miss?

AND THEY HAVE MOUNTAINS!!!!!!!  SERIOUSLY – I LOVE THE MOUNTAINS!!!!

Santiago –

Vina Del Mar

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Okay, so in case you were wondering, I’m a product of my environment. One of my best friends Jennifer and my brother Travers have been emailing about the masters all day. I found their exchange quite hilarious and thought y’all might enjoy a glimpse into the imagination of the people closest to my heart. (the following story bears no resemblance to reality, thankfully).

To: Travers
From: Jennifer
The Masters

See you at the Masters!!! yay! I’m bringing my new boyfriend Danny. I told him he wasn’t allowed to wear black, and we had to put some bandaids on his tats and take out his piercings before we go. Also, we were going to ride down on his hog, but I didn’t think my parents
would think that was too safe, so we’re taking the greyhound instead. Danny says it’s the best way to travel because of the toilets in the back and all, but he says we should probably sit by the front and get to be friends with the driver in case he wants a job one day. He’s so great at networking.

love – Jennifer

To: Jennifer
From: Travers
Re: The Masters

my girlfriend Dami has me running all over town looking for little plastic baggies(she sells schwag weed out of Mi Casa apartments in Athens). We have been dating for almost 3 weeks now, and we get along great. Her 4 cats get along real well with my 3 cats so we are like one big
happy family. We are actually leaving in the morning to go to Daytona for bike week, We are riding my Harley down to Daytona and her step mom and sister (Charity and Roschelle) are gonna follow us in the trailer. We have 2 motel rooms on the strip right near the liquor
store, so we should be in good shape. We are all really excited because we can finally get some new airbrush shirts. Daytona is the home of the airbrush, and we are going to the airbrush museum either friday or saturday. Ill send you a postcard.

love – Travers

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I went home last weekend. Friday night I went out with friends, and it was a big time. It was great to see J.R. and Mary Beth and all my other MCG friends. Otis and Caleb were in town and ended up spending the night at my house because they didn’t want to sleep on Stephen’s floor.

Saturday morning my mom cooked us sausage swirls and grits and we layed on the couches and watch Police Academy – the first one – which is really one of the most inappropriate movies I have ever seen, but very funny. Then we sat in the Adirondack chairs outside under the pergola, because it was 70 and breezy and sunny. Then the boys went to play golf, and I read Gone With the Wind for a while.

In the late afternoon, my dad called. He had been out in south Augusta, and had stopped at a flea market. (I used to think my brother and I were strange and our parents were normal, but the older I get, the more normal Travers and I appear, and the stranger my parents get).

Daddy: "Guess what I bought at the flea market?"
Me (worried, knowing it could be anything): Uhh, what?
Daddy: "A bantam trio."
Me: "Huh?"
Daddy: "A bantam rooster and two hens to go with him."
Me: "What in the hell are you going to do with a rooster and two hens? It is illegal to have a rooster inside city limits."
Daddy: "I know, but the people down the street have one. Maybe I’ll put them in the backyard and let the dogs chase after them. He is a really pretty rooster, you should have seen him come at this cock fighting rooster. He is tough."
Me: "Oh, then I’m sure he won’t harm our sissy dogs."
Daddy: (chuckling) "Well, maybe I’ll put them at the river."

So Saturday afternoon, I went out to the river with my mom and dad and the bantam trio. My dad stopped at a gas station to get a few beers and to stuff some hay in the crate with the birds. Our river property is just into south carolina, north of north Augusta. It isn’t very far, but my dad likes to stop and show us stuff on the way, like houses he likes, and/or are being built through one of his projects. So my mom is convinced the birds have been smothered by the hay, and my dad agrees. I hate birds, so I refused to sit in the backseat of the car.

Well, the rooster was really pretty, not very big, but lots of different color feathers – all the colors you associate with thanksgiving – orange, yellow, gold, red, and feathers down his legs, like pantaloons. The hens were not that pretty. Of course, there is a fox out at the river, and chicken hawks, and a mess of other predators that would love to pick off a brightly colored flightless bird on the bank of the river. This distressed my mother, but once we put them out there, it would have taken us all night to catch them again. I suggested that my mom and I open a beer and watch my dad TRY to catch the chickens. I thought it would funny. But it was getting cold, so we had to leave them to fate. My mom felt like we were sacrificing the birds to the fox and that they wouldn’t make it though the night. I told her someone would have eaten them at some point in time. I don’t like birds.

Daddy went out to the river on Sunday and the chickens HAD made it through the night. But I talked to Daddy today, and he said the chickens were gone when he went out there yesterday. He said it doesn’t mean they were eaten, they might have just wandered off. But I have my bets on the fox for this one.

Update: Daddy said next time he is going to get ducks, or something more hearty. I guess show chickens aren’t meant for harsh reality.

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I am going back to Athens today. Which is very exciting. What is not exciting is that I have to get all of my stuff back to Athens. And my stuff is strewn about my parent’s house with reckless abandonment. I wouldn’t be surprised if my dog was chewing on some poor piece of my personal property right now.

My brother got an iPod for Christmas. We found my dad’s iPod. We gave my dad an iPod for father’s day – and then I didn’t have time to set it up for him before I went to Greece – due mostly to the fact that he had to upgrade his computer before I could set it up. While I was in Greece my dad lost his iPod. And we didn’t find it until after Christmas. We didn’t really start looking for it seriously until Travers got one and my dad got jealous. But now it is set up and ready to go. So my brother, my dad, and I all have an iPod. And we all have cool speakers to go with our iPods. I got the bose sound dock for Christmas – and my brother couldn’t stand it until he could get one of his own. And my dad started feeling left out – so he went and bought the JBL Center Stage – which is much smaller than the sound dock, but still cool. I told my mom that before she knew it we were going to have speakers in every room in the house, plus one at the river and two in the mountains. My mom wasn’t amused because she is feeling left out in general because she doesn’t have an iPod.

Now that I have the sound dock I can use my iPod to blow people through the wall with my music. Isn’t that awesome?

I really don’t want to pack. I really, really, really, really don’t want to. I want to lay in the bed and eat cookies and read my book. I love cookies.

I want to go to a Dolly Parton concert this summer. Any takers? Does she still have concerts?

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Well, yesterday was not a fun day. But luckily it is over. I haven’t ever written about this, but now seems like a good time.

A few years ago a couple of FBI agents showed up at my dad’s office and wanted information about some work my dad had done for an accounting firm about five years prior. The accounting firm was being investigated for Medicare fraud. They wanted my dad to give them dirt about this firm and interrogated him for about 4 hours. The problem was, my dad didn’t know anything. So after cooperating with the FBI for about 2 years, they indicted my dad for obstruction of justice. My dad is an attorney. Basically, to make a long story short, at every step my dad thought that it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. When they offered plea agreements to the men from the accounting firm – keep in mind, men that had been lying to the government for years – the agreement allowed for a lighter conviction for the more people they would say "knew" what was going on, and my dad got indicted on a couple of other counts. Since he was already in the pleadings with the obstruction of justice count, this was easy. In the end my dad was bullied into a plea agreement – after five years of this he felt like he just needed to move on with his life. He plead to obstruction of a federal audit – which in his case (from what I understand) means that he saw (not produced or changed) documents that contained fraudulent information and he should have known about. Not that he did know, that he should have known. It is all much more complicated than this, but you get the idea.

I have very negative feelings about the FBI. Regardless, my dad has never lied to me and he says that if he had to do it all over again he doesn’t know what he could have done differently, short of never having worked for this accounting firm. Obviously I am a little bias, but I believe him. It is very scary the power that the FBI has at its own discretion with no checks.

So yesterday was the sentencing. The US attorneys were out for blood. Part of the agreement was that the prosecution was not going to make a recommendation to the judge. But you know what, he did anyway. He stated that they would be upset if my dad didn’t go to jail. And, up until that point, I don’t think I ever realized how serious this all was. I was sweating. And the judge started talking about how because he is an attorney he should be held to a higher standard and that attorneys take an oath that other people don’t. It really wasn’t looking good.

Then the judge started talking about how he had total discretion in the sentence. He said that in all the years that he had been a judge, he had never had a defendant with such a record of service to the community as my dad. He said he had never had a defendant who had such support from his family, friends, and community. He said he was impressed by the immense regard that everyone expressed for my dad (we (lots of people) wrote letters to the judge and some of my dad’s friends spoke on his behalf). He said that although he did believe that attorneys should be punished more severely, he said that he thought my dad had already been severely punished.

In the end, my dad got probation and community service along with a ridiculous fine. As I watched him write the check, I thought of the small islands I could buy. But I also thought of how it could be going to a rehab center for one of us or to something even worse. I am just happy that it is over and the uncertainty is no longer hanging over our heads. But geeze, it was scary there for a moment.

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