The Holidays

Almost always, the holiday season will lead me to some interesting thought process or realization about life or about myself. Late nights after full days, lots of activity and events, and - perhaps most importantly - lots of interaction with my brothers and immediate family and hangers-on, nearly all of whom are intelligent, dynamic, capable, thoughtful, and slightly insane. It's a good bunch, and this year we had a good time reciting movie lines (lots of Willow, Major Payne, and Waiting), paintballing, shooting, sledding, drinking, and putting together toys soldiers (theoretically for Adam's son Corbin, but realisitally for our use as well). That Adam's spawn has grown to the point of participating in some of these activities has added a whole new dimension to the festivities. Really gets my mind working, almost always with interesting results. After this year, I no longer feel the need to get Corbin a drum set, since Adam is already destined for a lot of grief, even without my intervention. I can hardly wait for his daughter to start giving him headaches. As studdorn and energetic as Corbin is, you can already see that Adam is DEFINATELY going to have his hands full with Callie. She's one of those people that thinks it's amusing to make people mad. She's going to turn two in a few months.

So we were all up in Oregon, and were joined by an Australian girl named Shelly, who's friends with my mom from when they were both traveling through Mongolia a few years back (no, I'm not joking). Mom was thinking that she and I might get along, and we did. Chemestry, but no spark, if you know what I mean. Spending time around them and being involved (and/or relied up to make things happen) led to some intersting thought about male/famale relations, including a debunking of some of the critical points of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Not quite sure how I'm going to fit it into The Rules, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

I also reached the conclusion that my job is responsible for my recent bouts of irritability and related symptoms. (Road rage, insomnia, etc. But not alcoholism. That's not a problem. Beer is good for you.) Not the litigation thing. I like that part, and would be bored without the contentiousness. It's the discovery part that I can't fucking stand. I'm thinking about trying to get into an appellate-based practice; law and motion. All the contentiousness, but from an intellectual angle, rather than spending most of my time trying to wring information out of douchebags who know that the law requires them to tell the truth and give it to me, but who choose not to do it anyway. It's so fucking dumb, especially since their lies and half-truths don't change a damn thing, except causing me a lot of extra work in proving them to be lying, and making them wish they'd told the truth in the first place. I have one case where a guy is asserting neck and back pains, which he says were caused by a slip and fall. He said under oath at depostion that prior to the fall, his neck and back were symptom free, and that some past problems aside (minor to start with and since resolved), his neck was fine. He was relying on the fact that most of his medical records were destroyed when Katrina knocked over a few hospitals. He was depending on me not finding the medical and worker's compensation records showing another, prior slip and fall, which resulted in severe neck problems, surgical intervention, and a finding of 10% permanant whole-body impairment from that prior incident. He must honestly have believed that we weren't going to catch him lying. Whoops. But in any rate, proving people to be lying douchebags who don't deserve a dime is really not as fun and novel as it once was, so it's about time for a change.

Finally, as a result of Shelly being there and interacting with all of us over Christman, I realized one of the critical criteria that must be met by whoever it is that I might eventually marry: she needs to like me more than she likes my brother.