the thin line between optimism and delusion…

I have to say that this is the longest week of my life. well, maybe that is a stretch, but it is close to the the truth. I broke my rule for myself and went running with Cristina again, and although I am proud of us being so disciplined, and I am proud that we have been running at the same pace every day, I am very sore. The one upside to all of this pain is that I have been sleeping like a champ lately. Jennifer commented yesterday that she doesn’t know how I sleep at night, considering the precarious situations I have a tendency to put myself in, and my best answer is because I can’t stay awake. I also played softball last night, which was tons of fun, but i could have hurt myself doing that too (I am very accident prone). I just want to give a shout-out to my entire team, they did a hell of a job, Christian did such a great job getting us all together, Jason was an excellent pitcher, Christy brought rice krispy treats, and the rest of us looked really good running back and forth off the field. The other team was entirely too together, they were quite serious and I am sure they have practice (what losers). The best part was that I got to use one of Cristina’s gloves, and didn’t have to use a yucky glove from the intramurals office. I gave my oral argument last night, which is much more nerve racking than I ever expect it to be. But my judges were very nice and I made a new friend with Hui, the boy I argued against. I can’t wait for spring break, it is going to be so great. Yesterday was a very long day. I need to pack tonight, i don’t mind packing, I hate unpacking. okay, I am going to go listen to Appel, he is in a great mood today, I met his dog last night, he and his wife were wandering around the law school with their dog, tess. Appel wanted to know if we were doing our oral argument, and it was all I could do not to say, no, we just like to stand outside the hatton lovejoy courtroom in suits to gain strength to survive law school. but i didn’t, I just smiled and said, yep.

I love quotes. it is really a problem. I have a scrolling quote bar at the top of my internet browser. So here is one of my favorite quotes. (I am also borderline obsessed with C.S. Lewis, i might have to give you more than one quote).

“Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things – ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption and stupidity. it is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer, but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out out fear.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night

“For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

I am not allowed to go running with Cristina anymore, since after we run I have a hard time walking. And walking is very important these days.

I think pibb extra is a disgrace. I loved Mr. Pibb, and saw no reason why the name or the drink needed to be changed. not that I don’t drink pibb extra, but I boycotted for about a year after they changed it. Cristina and Elizabeth and I are on the fifth floor of the main library, pretending to be undergrads. I love this library, it has lots of books, and not too many people. I am very behind on my school work and can’t get motivated. The weather is too wonderful. Cristina and i went for a run yesterday, and we decided that since we were both out of shape we should take it easy and not run too fast or too long. so we ran for about 25 minutes, and then looked at the map of the botanical gardens to see how far we had gone, and it looked like we had run about 2.2 miles, which was pretty slow for us, and I thought it was probably a good thing we hadn’t run too far. But then we looked at the map again and realized that we left out part of our run and had really run 3 miles. this wasn’t such a great thing, because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to walk today. Actually, I feel okay today, but I know tomorrow it is going to hit me pretty hard. I have two new favorite people, (they aren’t actually new people, and I have always liked them, but I have recently decided that they are favorites). Allison and Christy, can we hang out? Can I adopt ya’ll, or do ya’ll want to adopt me? either way, we should work something out, because ya’ll are awesome. And I want to specify that ya’ll are awesome individually, not just as a pair. In other news, my two friends in Aspen, Christie (different from Christy), and Jamie are anticipating my arrival. I talked to them yesterday and they were taking beer up to the top of the mountain and then planning on skiing down. Last time they attempted this intelligent plan, Christie had to be skied down by her Norweigen friend, and Jamie had to have ski patrol ski her down. I don’t think I will be available to participate in similar activities, due to the fact that I’m not that confident in my skiing abilities and I anticipate serious problems with the altitude (I get dehydrated and tired). But they sound like a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see the mountains. I love the mountains. they make me so happy, I can’t even express my attachment. And I haven’t been skiing in two years, so this is also exciting. Plus Christie says that we are going to have tons of fun at the bars in Aspen so to bring cute clothes. Hmmmmm. It is hard to think about when it is 70 degrees here. Okay, I am going to go read contracts. if I don’t see youregularly, I miss you, and I love you all.

a box of stuff that’ll go crazy when spring comes, but it’s pretty manageable until then ~ B. Andreas (I’m getting close to going crazy, spring is getting close)

I swear that this was my fortune on excite.com today:
“Just slack off today”

well, if the weather keeps up like this, I’m never going to make it till may. My quality of life has at least doubled in the last 48 hours. Yesterday, while in augusta, I sat on my front porch and ate zaxby’s with my parents. I was actually a little worried about getting a sun burn it was so beautiful. it would have been the perfect day for a run, but since I spent saturday night hanging out with willie nelson and my brother Travers, I was feeling a little under the weather and running was out of the question. so instead, i went inside and watched t.v. with my dog, Bella. Bella is the greatest dog ever. Bo, our other dog is also awesome, but he wouldn’t dream of being inside on such a beautiful day (also he is a little high strung). Bella would have liked to have been outside, but she tore her ACL playing basketball with Travers in the december, and is still recovering. we have to monitor how much time she spends outside. So Bella had to stay inside and watch the crocodile hunter diaries with me (she likes the animal planet). Mama also watched t.v with us. Daddy kept trying to get us to go on a bike ride with him, or a walk, or something, but Mama and I were both recovering from our self induced flu. Needless to say, I got nothing done this weekend. I spent the night in augusta last night, and woke up this morning to get back for class, but I didn’t get up early enough because I am lazy, so I missed Torts. but hey, it’s beautiful outside. I am definitely going to go run today, it is so beautiful, personal happiness is taking over dedication to law school. Cybil and went to the Jackson Street Bookstore today (after we ate lunch at the grill), to smell all the old books and to dream of a life were we could sit around and read old books all day and talk about them. Cybil says that we are going to outlive all the men and one day when we are 85, and there are no men to complicate things, we can just sit around at our beach house, or mountain house, and read books and talk about all the important things in life, instead of talking about guys. Until then, we will continue to over-analysis and discuss. I have so much work today, I should make a list. I don’t think I have ever made a list in my life of things I need to do. Or if I have made a list, it has been of long terms goal, like, things to do before I die. Maybe I made a list of things to do for a whole week, but I think I probably lost the list before the week started. So maybe I won’t make a list. I bet this is why I lose everything and am late everywhere. Lonnie is being pretty structured today in Civil Procedure, rule 20 is such a stimulating topic of discussion. I hate this class. I love this weather and chocolate chip cookies. and movies. I really want to watch lots of old movies sometime soon. old movies I have seen and old movies I haven’t seen. or really, just movies in general. but I think i have too many books to read. or maybe too much homework.

I have a few more thoughts on the Passion movie, I saw Mel Gibson on Jay Leno last night and it made me think of some stuff i left out. I think that Mel Gibson is such a brave person for putting his faith on display for the world. I know for me, my faith is one of the most personal things in my life, and although I like to talk about it to people, it is so very personal. I end up feeling attached to people I talk to about my faith, and this is dangerous sometimes, not necessarily a bad thing, but just a scary thing. So I am very impressed with this man. More importantly, I was amazed by the audience of the leno show last night, they were unbelievably supportive of Mel, and they cheered for him and laughed with him like he was their best friend in the whole world and they wanted to make sure he wasn’t being bullied, and they wanted to make sure he was being supported. It was really unbelievable. It was the kind of audience you would have expected if they had all known Mel personally and liked him. I guess that is what people feel like after watching the movie, because he opened himself up to people, they now feel a connection and an investment in him. It was so different from how Diane Sawyer treated him. Jay seemed really impressed, and I don’t know anything about Jay’s faith, but he seemed to have appreciated the movie in a similar fashion to how I appreciated it. My favorite thing that was said, Jay was talking about the movie and the way the violence affected him, and he said, “when you watch most violent movies, you feel like you are the one inflicting the pain, you are the one throwing the punch. But with this movie, the violence makes you feel like you are the one being punched, and that is the difference.” I thought this was a very appropriate analogy. okay, I am going to class.

I saw the Passion movie last night, and I thought it was a very well done movie, but people need to accept it for what it is and not for what they want it to be. It was terribly graphic and violent, but no more violent than the probably reality. I thought all the actors did an exceptional job, I love Jim Caviezel, he was wonderful. I also really liked the actor who played Pilate, and the actress who played Pilate’s wife. But the best part in the movie was that of Mary, the mother of Jesus, every scene she was in was spectacular. Satan was very creepy, but very appropriate. some people are going to hate this movie, but it is going to be for reasons that have nothing to do with the true meaning of the film. the point of the film was for Mel Gibson to express what the Passion meant to him, and to remind people what Jesus suffered for the world at large and to humanize Jesus for people. There were also certain Catholic artifacts, I guess you could call them, I can’t think of the word right now, but many cathedrals in Europe have holy artifacts that were recovered from the holy land during the crusades and at other times, some examples, the shroud that Jesus’s body was wrapped in (this one wasn’t used in the film), but in Rome, there are a set of wooden steps the Constantine’s mother brought back from Jerusalem, and you can only go up these steps on your knees, so when go to see these steps, there are people crawling up them, supposedly they are the steps that Jesus walked up when he was being judged by Pilate, and in the movie Jesus ascends steps to talk to Pilate, and also there is a women who wipes Jesus’s face with a white cloth, and a cloth with an imprint of Jesus’s face in blood is another example of an artifact. I don’t think that this in any way detracts from the movie, it is just interesting because Mel Gibson is catholic, and someone of another denomination might not have thought to include this sort of thing. I don’t know, I just thought it was interesting. People need to take away the over all message of this movie and not concentrate on small deviations from their own ideas.

since I didn’t get any of my work done yesterday, I decided to get up early and read before my 11:30 class (I don’t know who I was kidding). So when I woke up this morning, I hit the snooze and decided that reading wasn’t that important. Then i remembered that it was suppose to snow/ice last night, so I hopped out of bed and was so excited to discover that the ground was covered in snow and there was an email from the university giving me the day off. after jumping on my roommates, calling my mom and cristina, I crawled back in my bed and watched some quality morning television. after the mummy road show and a documentary on sharks, I passed out for a little snow nap. Around 11:30, Katie and I decided that we needed some food, so we set out for Bi Lo, came home, cooked spaghetti and watched the end of the young and the restless (katie’s choice). Jennifer emerged from her room to eat with us. Now I am watching E! hollywood story and national geographic’s living dangerously, contemplating the work that I need to do, and what work I can do, since the law school is locked up tight. So I think i might go eat some cookies. I don’t know if we will have school tomorrow, but who knows. I might go stir crazy. but maybe I will clean up my room….

There are some days when no matter what I say it feels like I’m far away in another country & whoever is doing the translating has had far too much to drink ~ b. andreas