One More Writer

[My girlfriend Valerie tries on ski boots before her first run down Mt. Bachelor over the holidays.]

Spring term for law school starts in 9 hours for me. And I can't wait to get back.

For 3 1/2 months, I spent 8 to 16 hours at the law school on weekdays, breaking only for weekends of football and time with family and friends. But for the last solid month, I've had no set schedule and relatively few commitments. A reprieve is nice and all, but I crave structure. As a result, I'm really looking forward to the new term starting today.

I've never gone to school on the semester system before, and I must say it's odd to begin "spring" term before the final college football game of the year (my money's on Ohio State, by the way, but I really, really would like Florida to win because I hate the Big 10 and like the SEC, despite an apathy for Florida in general.)

I fared decently in my first semester at Willamette, putting up one A, a B and two B minuses and averaging out to a 3.01 GPA. That doesn't sound too impressive, but I'd like to point out a few things. 1) It's better than my undergrad GPA. 2) The average law student is pretty smart. 3) The curve is set so the greatest number of people fall around a B minus GPA. Thus, my GPA is better than average. How much better? I don't really know. But as long as I stay above a 2.9 GPA each year I keep my scholarship, which pays for 60 percent of tuition, so I'm thankful for my grades this term.

Despite a lack of structure over break, I really did enjoy myself. I spent a lot of time with Valerie, who's an amazing woman. I'm falling more in love with her every day, and I really appreciate all the little things about our relationship, such as how we make sure to spend time with the other person's friends, or praying or reading the Bible together. I don't think this is really a very complete description, though. Reading this over it sounds like a rather proper, restrained relationship, which it's not :-) I guess the biggest thing is all the fun we have together. Val's really playful and loves teasing and being teased so we're often verbally sparring, or playing card games or engaging in covert tickle attacks. She's also an amazing kisser and that's all I'm going to say about that subject.

Over the break, I also spent a lot of time with the guys, watching a majority of the 32 college football bowl games and getting back into the Star Trek customizable card game (it's like Magic, except with Star Trek characters.) Will got about 5,000 cards for dirt cheap on eBay, and Ryan, Noah, Will and I have built seven or eight decks to kick the crap out of each other with. Maybe you have to watch Star Trek to really get it but I have fun even though I've probably only seen 30 episodes of Star Trek in my life. The best thing is four player games, which take about an hour to set up and eight hours to play. We pulled multiple all-nighters over Christmas break, as we slaughtered each other's forces with reckless abandon.

So I took a lot of pictures over break and I'd post some of them here but I thought I'd just start with an actual picture of Valerie (see top of page) since I hadn't posted anything yet. That pic is from a ski trip in December ... it was her first time on skis and she loved it. We're definitely going a few times this winter!