Aerosol Pancakes

Fun product review time! Have you ever wanted to combine the great taste of pancakes with the convenience of EZ Cheez? Do you still need the product to meet the USDA's standards for an organic label? Your wish is my command. Meet Batter Blaster:



Amazing! I first read about this product on Jorge Garcia's blog. When we spotted it at Whole Foods, I knew that we had to try it. I'm a huge pancake fan, but I'm not a huge fan of doing dishes. The Batter Blaster seemed like it would alleviate the need to dirty up and subsequently wash a mixing bowl, so it was worth a shot. However, I was skeptical going into the grand experiment.

The batter actually tastes pretty good. It flows really easily from the can-as you would expect-so you can make designs. I wasn't thrilled with the density of the pancake (very, very light), but that one concern is overshadowed by the simplicity and taste of the product. Have I mentioned that it's organic? If you try it out, let us know what you think.

Bringing It to Life

I'm trying to organize all the files on my hard drive since I have a ton of folders from law school scattered across the hard drives of several different computers. This kind of activity reminds you of things you might have forgotten about. Case in point, check out this picture:

This is a "movie poster" for a project that me and Nate were working on. here's the idea: update A Charlie Brown Christmas as a live-action film (like the Grinch re-make) but target it towards the 18-49 male demographic by including senseless violence, bioterrorism, and, of course, a grown-up version of the little red-headed girl. Also, we decided that we'd have to remove the holiday elements since we wanted it to be a summer blockbuster. This film didn't come to fruition beyond the poster and this YouTube promo. Scary? Sure, but we projected a huge return at the box office. This is what people want, but I have a feeling we'll have some problems getting the proper licenses for the characters, etc.

From the Floor: Done and Done

Adelaide Macaroni Padgett is a puppy, specializing in sleep and play. She is author of The Perils of White Puppies in New England, Growling at Windmills, and Bichon: The Story of an Urban Sophisticate. Her series for this blog "From the Floor" strives to provide a commonplace-if not subaltern-view of newsworthy events.

Concord, NH--So, Anna and Austin are super-busy right now with unpacking and bar review, so I thought that I would give you the post about graduation. After moving back to Cincinnati, we turned right back around to New Hampshire, including a 17-hour day in the car--very long for a puppy. When we got back to our New England house, I was ready to play/practice my bipedalism.




The best part was that Grandmother Nancy and Great-Grandmother Hendricks came up to join in the festivities. They are two of my favorite ladies (check me and G-G Hendricks making eyes in the top picture), and they treat me like one of the less hairy members of the family.


While processing through the line, Austin snapped some pictures from his "Tam-Cam." You can really see the beauty of White Park and the scruffs or nuchae of his classmates' necks.

White Park is one of my favorite places to go for walks and a great place for pictures. I've also heard that they have an awesome hill for sledding in the snow.

I'm proud of Austin. After three years of hard work, he gets to go work hard. Have fun with that, dude. I'll think of you when I'm napping and playing all day long. But seriously, I love this guy.

Alright, Big Guy. It's time for me to help you keep it real while you study for the bar exam. You will pass this thing and buy me another yard in which to play.

Goodbye, Old Friend

Anna and I are living downtown--just a few blocks from where I'll be working. This is going to be terribly convenient, and we'll only need one car. Therefore, we decided to sell my car. I completed the transaction this past Friday, and it was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. The car I sold was my first car, the one I got when I was 16.

I'm grateful that I have a family that could afford to get me a car when I became street-legal. I still remember when my mother came to pick me up from a track meet at Pace High School in 1996. I couldn't find her car in the lot, and she totally surprised me by unlocking the new Grand Prix. I was most impressed with the sound system because it was the first car in our family that had a CD player in it. I must have listened to the Eric Clapton Unplugged album (my favorite album at that time in my life) a hundred times in that car.

I took pretty good care of that car, and I remember spending a lot of hot, Florida Saturday mornings washing that car so that I could impress some bonnie lass. I drove several ladies around in that car on first dates, and I also drove it on the last dates with those same ladies. Most of those events were the same date. Even a sweet ride will not overcome the stigma that comes with looking like Harry Potter.

In the roughest times, I would just drive that car around to empty my mind. In the best of times--most notably, our wedding--the car was waiting for us at the end of a long line of friends that were blowing bubbles through cheap, plastic wands.

All of these memories came back in a quick rush when the buyer and I agreed on a price. Though it's just a thing/machine/object/stuff, it has been with me through my formative years. If I were to include that sort of intangible value in my price, nobody could afford my car. So, it didn't, and it sold. And I felt rotten for a little while afterwards.

I hope that the car serves the buyer well. It's going to a family that needs a new ride, and they're getting a great, well-kept machine. I also think that I left a disc in the CD player, so, if they're reading this, they could get that back to me if they want to be decent--just leave it with Phil.

Goodbye, old friend. Truly, wider is better.

Lookalikes Revisited

A few posts ago, I wrote about how much people think I look like Harry Potter. There was a relative "outpouring" of comments. Mike commented that people think he looks like Jake Gyllenhall, making Julie, his lady friend, Reese. Nate commented that he looks like Tom Hanks in one of his particularly brilliant portrayals, making Erin, his lady friend, Antonio Banderas. Sorry, Erin. If it makes you feel better, Anna would be Ginevra Weasley to my Harry.

I thought I'd follow up with another post on the same subject. A few years ago, my buddy Robert Z. spotted this photograph in Foreign Policy magazine. I'll admit that I look a little like Harry Potter, but, particularly when I have shaggy hair, I look exactly like this photograph of South Korean heartthrob Bae Yong-Joon. I'm working on piecing together this outfit for a direct comparison photograph. Don't hold your breath; it's a tough jacket to find on a budget.

Here's my most recent attempt:

The Last Three Years

Pending grades, I have completed all of my law school courses, and I want to take one post to reflect on what I thought went well and what I thought I could have done better. I'm going to try my best to avoid the same, often-useful-sometimes-trite advice that a lot of former law students hand out. I have a reminder on my calendar to write a response to this post one year from now when I have a different perspective.


1. I should have completed my previous degree before trying my hand at law school. I devoted every other weekend of my 1L year to completing my M.M. thesis. I still did well, but I was running out of steam by midterms in the spring, and I really had to dig deep for a while there. My advice to anyone that is going to do lawschool is to get as many other obligations out of the way as you can before starting.


2. I'm glad that I aspired to read every word that was assigned. I remember one of our 1L professors promising that we would be handsomely rewarded if we would do the work assigned. Beyond a few memos, we were assigned to do a lot of reading, and I gave it my all. I didn't read every word that was assigned (who could?), but I always tried. A lot of students realized that they could make it through without doing all of the reading, claiming they had become "efficient." My advice: read everything you can while you have the luxury of time and a professor that's usually willing to entertain your questions.


3. I'm glad that I had other things going on. I know that I said everyone should seek to fulfill all other obligations before starting law school. That was true to a point. Most of my favorite memories from the past three years don't involve law school. I will look back fondly on our neighborhood and learning about home ownership and other grown-up stuff from all of our awesome neighbors. Also, I loved our Wednesday dining group and making music with the people out in Henniker. Enjoy law school for all it is worth, but make sure you have something else that you can do for fun. You'll do better in the end.


4. I wish that I had written a lot more. I tried to take as many doctrinal classes as I could, classes that only had final exams, so I could get a broad education. This was very good for me, but I wish that I had taken a few more writing classes--particularly an independent study where I had another full-length paper to shop around for publication. You can never get too much writing experience (or so I've heard), and becoming an expert in a focused topic is a nice counterbalance to the broad legal concepts you will learn in the doctrinal classes.

It's been a great three years, and I hope that these thoughts will help someone along the way.

Rolling with the Big Boys

We apologize that we've been out of touch for the past two weeks. Things have been busy, and we've been without internet access. Now we're back--and we're in Cincinnati. We've dealt with the stress of the move, and we're now working through the boxes to get unpacked. It's going to take a while.

For now, rest assured that our trip was safely executed. Anna's dad graciously helped us out by allowing us to load up his trailer and drive it out here. Even with that trailer, we still needed another truck, and I got to drive it.

I was really afraid that it was going to be difficult to drive that truck, but, by the middle of New York, the student (me) had become the teacher (of the truck). Even better, I started thinking I was a trucker. It began when we would stop at rest stops. Having to choose between TRUCKS and CARS, I naturally chose the former (see picture).

I noticed that truckers had a lot to deal with, always checking stuff on their trucks. So, I did the same with mine. I pushed on the tires to make sure they were still . . . there. I would open the back of the truck to check on my "load." I really wanted to sleep in the truck, but Anna made me come inside the hotel.

It got worse. I started thinking that I was part of the brotherhood of truckers when we were on the road. There were a few times when I could tell that one of my brethren needed to change lanes. Who would jump out and block traffic for him? His loyal Budget buddy. I didn't have a CB, but I'd like to think that he was thanking me over on channel 13 or whatever.

The biggest slap in the face came when I figured out that the truck ran on 87-grade gasoline--not diesel. So, I would park with the big guys and then creep over to the regular gas pumps, feeling ashamed and inadequate. I had a feeling that they were laughing at me. If they didn't laugh at my gas pump slooping, they would certainly be laughing at my cabinmates. Across the whole drive, my dwarf lime tree (Sprite) and my dwarf lemon tree (7-Up) rode in the cab of the truck. We had a great ride and really got to know one another.

In the end, we made it here. I know that I'm not a trucker, but I feel a little closer to the transportation industry as a whole. I'm really glad I drove for two reasons. First, it was a new experience. Second, we payed two guys from a moving company to help us pack up the truck, and their incompetence in the packing process made me feel that much better about driving the truck myself.

More about our new digs soon.

[Note: For more on Sprite and 7-Up, see this previous post.]