NOW You Can Call Me Ben, Esquire

Go to this web page.

Click on pass list for the July 2006 Bar Examination.

Click on the "S" last names.

Scroll way down to the name "Stark."

Congratulate me.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

[Christy says to tell y'all that we jumped up and down. Also she made me banana pudding. She seems to keep telling me what to blog. One of the many reasons I love her.]

What To Do When Your Pants Rip In The Middle of Downtown Atlanta?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are me. (Try and suppress the gag reflex that statement created. I'm trying to make a point here.)

You are at the end of your work day, having once again conquered the growing fear that you are incompetent. You are waiting for your train underground at a MARTA station. Instead of thinking about the day, you find more refuge in thinking about the future. You decide - after two weeks of craziness involving travels to Dallas, DC, St. Louis, and Chicago - that it is time to look into the job benefits you were supposed to sign up for 2 weeks ago.

You crouch down to open your briefcase (your wife's laptop bag, converted to new purposes) and get out your Thrift Savings Plan booklet, when suddenly you hear the most godawful "RIIIIIIIIIIP!"

You realize, with dawning horror, that the sound was your pants.

And this isn't any small hole. Oh, no.....this hole is in the middle of your pants and it ranges from front to back. Underpants notwithstanding, you are basically mooning several dozen, if not hundreds, of Atlantans. ("Underpants notwithstanding".....now there's an underused phrase.)

Thus far, no one seems to have noticed. Perhaps the noise wasn't as loud as it felt to you. Everybody's keeping to themselves and nobody is looking at you. NEVER have you been so thankful for the impersonal nature of modern urban society.

But this still leaves a dilemma. You are in downtown Atlanta. The train to take you home is rapidly arriving, but to get to it, you must walk to the train car - all the while giving no cause for the public to wonder whether you wear boxers or briefs.

But walk you must. So you walk...awkwardly carrying the Thrift Savings Plan booklet in front of you and your laptop bag-turned-briefcase behind you....trying desperately to cover the gaping whole in your pants. You realize you are probably only drawing more attention to yourself, but the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

After a tense ride back home (thank God you got to sit down), you awkwardly walk to your car, drive home, awkwardly walk into your apartment, and swiftly change out of your lawyer costume and into some jeans.

My question to you, dear readers, is two-fold: (a) how would you handle such an embarrassing situation? and (b) what would be going through your mind? I ask that 2nd question because - honest to God - the thought that kept popping in my head was how this would be a good topic to blog about. This may give you an insight into the warped nature of my mind.

Crazy life, the short version

I was gonna write a witty blog about my job. It was going to introduce my boss, who is a very nice guy. It was also going to make jokes about the fact that my boss's boss's boss's boss is George W. Bush (could be worse, right? Right? RIGHT?!). On the plus side, I have my own office. On the minus side, it's so buried within the Sam Nunn Federal Center that I'm forgetting what daylight looks like.

How's the actual work? Too soon to tell.

But then these last several days have been insane. Christy has been offered a job which would have her work on nights and weekends. After she and I agonized over it, she turned the job down so that we could still spend time together in the first months of our marriage. It's kind of hard turning down a job offer when there's no backup offer.

This morning, Christy got a call from her mom telling her that Christy's aunt had died. So Christy flew off to Dallas today to comfort her mom. We were already going to go to Dallas for the annual Resnick family reunion/Texas-OU football game. So I'll be flying up on our original plane tickets Friday.

Funny. Christy was never that close to this aunt. I barely knew her. But it's just shocking that she was at our wedding just over a month ago and now she's gone.

So our lives are in total disarray right now. Our apartment mirrors it. Boxes all over the apartment. Stuff strewn about for lack of furniture to put it in.

And Christy's in Dallas while I'm in Atlanta. It's funny. We've been apart before. Hell, we were apart for the better part of 3 years. But I've never felt her absence so keenly as now.

I'm pretty depressing right now, no? On the plus side, I've got my own office, interesting and friendly co-workers, and a William Rehnquist bobble-head doll. On the mega-plus side, I know there's a God who loves me and Christy and has a purpose for us. However hard things get, I know I'm here to love. Keepin' focus on that helps.

Did I mention that I have a William Rehnquist bobble-head doll? It's cool.

Goodnight y'all. I'll e-see you in the morning.