Posted in Augusta, Weblogs on April 24, 2009| 2 Comments »
My parents yard is on the Sacred Heart Garden Festival this weekend. 
I wish I had a better picture of the yard, but I like this picture of Bo and Bella. I just stopped by there and let me just say it was very hard to leave. It’s a beautiful day, it is suppose to be a beautiful weekend, and if you are in the area, you should go check it out!
Also, I am totally obsessed with this new blog from Maira Kalman. I have a copy of The Elements of Style that she illustrated and I love it.
Posted in Favorite People, Weblogs on March 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Betsy and I have been having a little reciprocal love on the blogs, which is probably only entertaining to the two of us, and for that I apologize. But I do have a few more things to say about Betsy, in response to her last post about me.
My law school friends referred to Betsy as the WGF, which stands for World’s Greatest Flirt. And I learned a great deal about flirting from the Betsy, who is truly, a master. She is such a phenomenal flirt, she once convinced a gay man to rent his house to her, instead of selling it. The house was on the market, had a for sale sign in the yard, and was listed for something close to a million dollars. Betsy called the man and flirted her way into a rental for herself and three other girls. To this day, the house is still being rented to four girls, the original girls have slowly gotten married or moved away and have been replaced. But I still have a key to this magical house, lovingly referred to as the Terrace.
When the grass would get too long on the front lawn of the Terrace, Betsy would simply find some unsuspecting yard man during her afternoon run and convince him to stop by her house on his way home and mow the lawn real quick for $20. Luckily, she is a bilingual flirt, and her Spanish has come in handy at such times.
Did I mention the fact that Betsy is an aerobics instructor? I’ve heard her step and her sculpt class are legendary. I’ve heard, mostly because I’m too uncoordinated to do aerobics, and she has this horrible habit of teaching class at 6 am.
Betsy taught me how to take the five extra minutes and ask about the sale price that rang up more than what was on the shelf, how to convince a mechanic to plug the hole in your tire for a $10 tip, and the best way to handle a server at a restaurant who is less than thrilled to be taking your order. Betsy’s ability to handle people always amazes and inspires me.
I wish we were eating lunch at five star, or the cafe at pharr, or the resort. Sigh. Another day.
Posted in Weblogs on July 10, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Kat tagged me in Four things about me, so here we go –
Four Jobs I’ve held – (umm, well, I was in school a very long time…)
1. Right now I write letters to prisoners as part of my job. How’s that? It takes me a while to get back to the people who abuse children. Bottom of list of things to do.
2. I worked at the front desk of this Lodge in Colorado. It is now closed down, which is terribly depressing and sad. Libby and I daydream about buying the place and running it for the rest of our lives. We only need $15 million to buy it, and a few more to fix it up.
3. I worked in transportation at the Masters golf tournament. I was a junior in high school. It was our job to pick the golfer and his caddy up in the parking lot, and drive them 100 yards to the club house. The other part of our job involved picking up the new cadillacs and other cars from the dealerships and driving them to the National at the beginning of the week, then driving them back at the end of the week. I was coordinated enough to lock the keys into the cadillac that had all the spare keys in the trunk. HOW WAS I SUPPOSE TO KNOW THE SPARE KEYS WERE IN THAT CAR? Definitely the coolest job I ever had for a week.
4. I was in charge of Development for my sorority in college (obviously didn’t get paid, but more interesting than the law firm jobs I’ve had). It was my job to make sure you weren’t drinking at events if you weren’t 21 and that there was no alcohol in the house. This is a job that sounds like no fun. And it did give me some nightmares. But it challenged me and taught me that mutual respect is a very effective tool.
Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over
1. Mean Girls
2. Out of Africa
3. The Royal Tennenbaums
4. Gone With the Wind
Four Places I’ve Lived
1. Athens, Ga.
2. Rome, Italy
3. Rome, Ga.
4. Grand Lake, Colorado
Four Places I’ve Vacationed
1. Santiago, Chile
2. Steamboat Springs, Colorado
3. Saratoga Springs, NY
4. Long Boat Key, Florida
Four of my favorite Dishes
1. Anything with grits. Salmon and grits, grits and sausage swirls, shrimp and grits, praline chicken and grits, etc.
2. A hot ham sandwich when the ham has just come out of the oven (and smothered in glace), on white bread with mayonnaise. Preferably in my parents kitchen during the holidays when Libby and Jennifer and I have just returned from the bar.
3. Any salad I ever had in Greece – cucumbers, tomatoes, feta, yummy.
4. Birthday cake my mom makes. Unbelievable.
Four sites I visit daily
1. Gmail.com
2. Bloglines.com
3. Weather.com
4. Westlaw.com
Four Places I would rather be
1. In the blue ridge mountains.
2. In the rocky mountains.
3. On a boat, on the ocean or the lake.
4. At a cafe in Italy or Greece – drinking coffee or beer – people watching with people I miss.
I’m really bad about responding to these things, and I feel like the people who would have responded have already been tagged, so I’m not going to tag anyone. Following directions has never been my strong suit.
Posted in Current Affairs, outside, Weblogs on March 13, 2007| 3 Comments »
I haven’t seen Al Gore’s movie on global warming. But I’ve heard a lot about it, you know, when I haven’t been researching basketball ranking for my bracket. And a few of my favorite bloggers are talking about it. Kat, Pete, and Scoplaw all posted about it recently, and apparently there is a new york time’s article that came out today as well. And then there are a lot of other blog posts from blogs I’m less familiar with.
So I’ll tell you what I do know. I know that places like LA, and Atlanta and big metropolis areas with tons of cars are bad. Bad for everyone. Smog is something I’ve experienced first hand and it is disgusting. I don’t have a source to back this up, but a friend told me there are national parks in California where you can’t hike certain days of the summer because the smog from LA has floated over and made the air a hazard. Which makes me very, very sad. But I also know that car pollution in rural areas where there are lots of trees and things to offset the bad emissions aren’t a huge concern. That is why you have emission standards in big cities and not everywhere. Atlanta has emission standards for cars, Augusta and Athens don’t. Augusta doesn’t really need to. Not that it might not be helpful in a nominal way, but the damage doesn’t justify the cost as it does in a big city.
Okay – pollution is bad. This is a premise I feel good standing behind. And pollution, like most everything else in the world, is worse depending on the context.
But when it comes down to how exactly pollution affects our atmosphere as an entire planet, I’m a little less clear on things. Because, well, to me, there see to be too many external factors and too little data to come to a clear conclusion. The earth has been around for a long time. We have been around for a much shorter time. We have been been keeping records for an even shorter period of time. We have been concerned about global warming for a very, very, very brief point in history. Not that this is a good reason to discount global warming. Because, who knows, those people could be 100% right. Just because I can’t prove something doesn’t mean I can disprove it either.
Volcanoes give me great pause in all of this. I watched a national geographic channel special on volcanoes. Volcanoes screw up all kinds of things. Volcanic eruptions can throw off the global temperature significantly. The earth eventually recovers, after a bunch of people starve, according to national geographic. People die, but the earth recovers.
I took both of the environmental law classes that Georgia had to offer in law school, I took the environmental practicum that taught me a TON about local pollution and cross referenced forestry and ecology, and education and law and landscape architecture, and a few other disciplines. I try to read stuff and keep up. I’ve been to dissertations of friends in forestry studying bugs in the woods. I would say I’m better informed than the average citizen, that I’ve at least been exposed to a lot of different theories and angles and ideas about the environment and what we are doing to it. But I certainly don’t possess any degrees in earth science, or any science at all. And sometimes I think maybe this is all over my head. And sometimes I think I’m being lazy and should THINK HARDER, then maybe it will all be clear to me. And then my brain starts to explode. When I do start shifting to one camp or the other, I start to feel like I’m drinking cool aid.
I don’t know. Honestly. I just don’t know. What do you think?
Posted in Weblogs on February 20, 2007| 5 Comments »
I started my first blog three years ago today. Sort of. It was actually February 24, but it was a tuesday and today is a tuesday, so I’m going to pretend like it was today – since I won’t be around on February 24 to tell you about it. I originally wrote on livejournal, here is my very first post. The day I started my blog was the day after I turned in my 1L brief. That seems like ages ago, while at the same time I remember the entire day very vividly.
I liked live journal, but about six months after I started the blog I moved to blogspot and about a year after that I moved to my current location on typepad. Oh yeah – and I used to be pretty against line breaks, so my livejournal stuff is a little difficult to read.
But it is interesting. I think I was a little less concerned with the audience at that point. And I definitely rambled a lot. I might have been a little more honest and stripped in my writing. Not that I’m not honest now, but I’m a little more censured. It is interesting.
In honor of this anniversary I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for reading this blog, it means more to me than I think I even realize. I appreciate the comments and the silence. Y’all are great. Love ya.
Posted in Favorite People, Weblogs on December 5, 2006| Leave a Comment »
The Dilbert Blog is amazing. Read here about how music should be considered a drug. Love it.
Posted in Weblogs on September 15, 2006| 2 Comments »
Posted in Weblogs on April 19, 2005| Leave a Comment »
My favorite thing about livejournal was the friend’s feature that made it easy to read your friend’s blogs. Now I feel like I miss things. But in catching up tonight, I remembered that Ian and Jamie KILL ME. They absolutely crack me up. Honestly, I was crying. The Homeless people? The reason I can’t get anything done? All explained. Worried about what you should eat tomorrow? Wish more people told stories involving the Wu Tang Klan? Sleep easier tonight. And if you can’t get enough of these two, you can always listen to their talk show "ViewPoints" at 6:30 on Wednesdays – broadcasting live from the top of memorial hall, WUOG – 90.5. (I’ve been a special guest before!) See old Comments | See old Trackbacks
Posted in Weblogs on February 24, 2005| Leave a Comment »
I started my first blog a year ago today. It started on livejournal, and I like livejournal a lot.
Probably the most interesting part of my livejournal days involved my time in Greece.
But when I got back from Greece, I wanted to post pictures from Greece, and I had a hard time doing this on livejournal, so I moved to Blogger. But I continued to post on livejournal as well, the same stuff, but on both sites because my law school friends have a sort of community on livejournal.
Eventually, some of my law school friends broke away from livejournal, and I stopped posted to both sites.
But anyway, the point of the post is that I have been doing this for a year, which is crazy, but I love it.
Posted in Weblogs on January 7, 2005| Leave a Comment »
I like to read other people’s blogs. I have my law school friends, most of them write on Livejournal and I read their blogs on my friend’s page. But I also like to read the blogs of people that I don’t know and who I will probably never meet.
When I first run across a blog I like, I try to find things out about the person. I like to know which part of the country in which they reside, I am interested in where they grew up, where they went to school, what their profession consists of, and why they started their blog.
Because in a time when blogs are obscure but at the same time all the rage, starting a blog is difficult. You almost need an excuse. Like – "Well, my friend gave me a subscription to typepad for Christmas." Otherwise you might seem like you are following a trend, and nothing kills a trend faster than lots of followers.
I have a list of blogs that I enjoy reading. You can look on the sidebar if you are interested. Blogs are meant to be read on a regular basis. If you do not read a blog on a regular basis, it is important to back up and start a couple of posts back in order to know what is going on. When you first come across a particular blog you like, you must first either read the blog in a way in which it was not meant to be read – backwards – or you must back up and catch up so you can read the blog as it was intended.
If you write a blog, it is important to be aware of this. On one hand, being redundant is not clever – but on the other hand you hate to have your new readers confused to a point that they never return to your site. There is no real point to this post other than the interesting way in which blogs must be read and how reverse chronological order can affect things.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 