Month: January 2006

Gainesville, TX Train Station (by the way, it’s a beautiful old brick building with some really old live oak trees out front).

I had to go to Gainesville, TX on Monday and it was an absolutely beautiful day to drive. Whenever I get to go anywhere I always feel like I am missing a day of work. Nevertheless, I was able to walk around downtown for a few minutes before I met my client and take some pictures of downtown Gainesville. The Cooke County courthouse looked to be in incredible shape, but was obviously under construction. I wouldn’t mind seeing it after they’re done with it.

My client was an incredibly nice eighty-four year old man. His wife passed away and I had to probate his wife’s Will. We’ll call my client Mr. M. It’s amazing when you get a chance to sit down and talk to older people, but apparently, Mr. M was in World War II and he was a glider pilot. Yes, that’s right an airplane without an engine. It was the job of the glider pilot to haul jeeps and heavy artillery to different spots behind enemy lines and then find a place to land or crash. Mr. M flew into Normandy on that fateful day, behind enemy lines. I never new this part of WWII history and was completely unaware of these men. The United States and England both had glider pilots. My boss was telling me that many times upon crash landing, the cargo would come smashing forward into the cockpit. Mr. M showed me a ton of old photographs from the war. You could tell that all he wanted to do was share a little bit of his life and I was glad to accept. I will write a much better history lesson given enough time, but not today.

By the way, if you haven’t gotten the hint, talk to an older person and more times than not they will have something interesting to say and you’ll probably learn about something that you didn’t know previously. Writing assignment for the week.

Lynkys:

I’ve been listening to a lot of James Blunt, he’s good (by the way Chris, if you have his latest CD, will you burn it for me? I’ll love you forever and ever and ever).

A discussion of the NL Central (for Ben).

More on William Wesley (from True Hoop). For those of you who aren’t keeping up, Wesley is a NBA powerbroker, but he’s not an agent.

Interesting item on Tech vs. A & M recruiting.

Mandy Moore to appear in episode of Scrubs.

Hayden Christianson and Sienna Miller are more than friends?

A neat picture of a dog on the subway with a brick in it’s mouth . . . and . . .

The 100 best first lines from novels (both through the greatness of Kottke).

Good times at Snuffer’s last night. I wish I had gotten pictures of everyone with their full belly faces afterwords, but I figure no one really wants to pose for that type of picture. Please notice that Tony is only partially seen here as his identity is to be concealed, and thus, the picture of Tony and Leslie has not been posted.

The cheese fries (I’m sorry about the incredible glare off of the ranch) did not beat Miranda and I as I believe that we finished the most.

On another note, please notice the Flickr badge on the right side of this page. I don’t know what else to say other than I think it is very neat.

Linkys:

With so many new babies that will be running around, see if your baby’s name is popular.

The Dallas Morning News has a new recruiting blog for Big 12 schools.

This is the camera that I want.

By the way, a person who stated that she was the mother of the child from the Flickr video requested that I remove the link to her son’s photo due to the exposure. I have complied, but I wonder how she found that link?

Good times.

Ashley F. wanted to know how I got my screen saver and so I give to you Google Pack. You can pick and choose which applications you want to download and the screen saver is one of them. I recommend Google Earth, Picassa and Firefox.

(I want to preface all of this by stating that this post will ramble, but please bear with me.)

So this is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I think I have gotten Miranda on my bandwagon. Miranda and I bought journals this past weekend.

I believe that we as humans do not do all that we can do to exercise our minds. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have an incredible time turning off my mind at night, my brain is constantly churning ideas ranging from every topic. We are always concerned about getting in shape, but we all resort to doing nothing once we get home from work. I believe that this thought process of mine does go to waste, which is one of the reasons why I started this blog. I really felt that I needed a forum to express myself. Not necessarily for any one person or group of people to be impressed with my writing skills. I love the fact that people can come to this website and share what is going on in my life, but the reality is that I needed a release, I needed to be creative. I know that few of us have jobs that would be fulfilling from a creativity standpoint, but that doesn’t meant that your mind has to stop.

Thus, I am encouraging everyone to start writing. Not to post on the internet or to write a novel or to compose a sonnet, but to simply write. I do not think it’s important that you are a good writer, this can be something that is simply for you, but you should write about something which you are passionate.

I will write about the horrible pent-up feelings I still have with what happened with Rage and the fact that there was nothing in the world that I could do to make her better despite the fact that I drove to College Station to save her life and ended up putting her to sleep the next day. I will write about my version of how my wife and I met and fell in love. I will write about fantasy football and the method to my madness. I will write about my goals and aspirations. I will write about my memories in law school. I will write about my family.

I don’t think that it’s important to write about one thing and it’s not about being perfect or grammatically correct, it’s about getting something on paper. All it would take is the 30 extra minutes that most of us have during lunch. Instead of sitting at your computer, write. Get up early Saturday mornings and write.

What about the people who are about to have kids? What are your fears or your dreams for your not yet born child? There will be memories that you will forget that will be so precious to you at that time. There is no reason to let them slip away.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but memories fade, very quickly. Memorializing those memories isn’t about necessarily capturing the moment, but it can be about capturing those feelings.

It doesn’t take much. Go to the store, but a notebook and write.

Write about your favorite football team and the fact that they lost their offensive coordinator and who you would like to see them hire. Write about your favorite baseball team and what hopes you have for Danks, Volquez and Diamond to do in the majors. Write about your grandparents, they will not be here forever. Write about how much you love your significant other. Write about anything.

I must also admit that I am a horrible writer. I always have writer’s remorse. When I put pen to paper I always think that I could have been more specific or more colorful, but there is no reason why you can’t come back to that thought and expand on how you feel.

I do not know how many readers I have, but I think I can count the number of people who will actually do this on one hand, but I hope everyone takes a minute to think about doing this and then do it.

For those of you who will ignore my request – Linkys:

Corvette stolen in 1969 and returned.

I have 20 invitations to a neat website, Newsvine, where you determine what news you feel is important. All you have to do is ask.

SI.com grades the baseball offseason of all AL teams.

Former NBA’er, Ralph Sampson, is in trouble (from TrueHoop).

“Is George Clooney dating Teri Hatcher? Cuz if he is, he could do a lot better. A lot better. (DListed)” (from Egotastic)

Check out the interesting things that have been scanned on the National Archives.

If you have not checked out flickr then you are doing yourself a disservice. Funny picture of a kid and snot (link removed as per the mother’s son request) .