| | My posting probably will be a little light over the next few days, due to a variety of factors.
First of all, my home computer temporarily is out of commission and, although the problem appears relatively minor, it does limit my internet access while the machine is being repaired. (In a related item, if you’ve sent me an e-mail within the last day or two, you should operate from the assumption that I won’t get it until sometime next week. This has been a public service announcement.)
Secondly, I will be attending the Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s annual estate planning seminar tomorrow and Saturday, so I will be out of pocket for a little while.
For those of you who are not members of the State Bar of Georgia, licensed attorneys are required to receive a certain number of hours of continuing legal education each year. Most of these seminars are held in downtown Atlanta and begin at 9:00 a.m. on a weekday, which requires fighting rush hour traffic and leaving home at a ridiculously early hour of the morning.
Consequently, my policy during my first year or two of practicing law was to attend a seminar---any seminar---as long as it was held somewhere other than Atlanta. A little over a year after I was admitted to the bar, I saw that the estate planning institute was being held in Athens on a Friday morning in February 1999.
This was perfect. Any excuse for getting back to the Classic City is a good one, but the estate planning institute had the added bonus of taking place on a Friday. This was a good thing because I am an alumnus of the Phi Kappa Literary Society, a student debating society founded at the University of Georgia in 1820. (My wife, Susan, is a Phi Kappa alumna and she and I met in Phi Kappa Hall.)
The Society meets on Thursday nights. I had been out of law school for a little under two years at that point, so I simply went over to Athens after work on Thursday, attended the Phi Kappa meeting, took part in debate, slept on some fellow Phi Kappan’s couch that night, got up the next morning, and made the short drive to campus to attend the seminar.
Then a funny thing happened. I discovered that I actually was interested in the subject of the seminar, which I had attended due solely to geography and timing, not due to any affinity for the topic. Most of the estate planning I do involves relatively uncomplicated matters having little or nothing to do with, say, estate tax issues, but my practice was affected in a profound and positive way by my unexpected realization that I had an aptitude in this area.
Although the responsibilities of fatherhood now prevent me from going over to Athens on the Thursday evening before the seminar, I will be attending my sixth straight estate planning institute tomorrow.
Due to these considerations, my posting here at Kyle on Football will be more limited over the course of the next few days, for which I beg your pardon. In the meantime, though, I am introducing a new feature, which I call “The Weekly Weblogger Challenge.”
On a number of previous occasions, I have mentioned Pete Allen, an attorney in Macon and a close friend of mine for more than 17 years now, who was my roommate during law school and was the best man at my wedding.
Pete is a fellow alumnus of the Phi Kappa Literary Society and, on occasion, he used to issue a challenge to me just before a debate in the Hall. Pete would give me a list of five names, consisting of people, places, and historical events. My challenge was to work all five names into a five-minute speech on the evening’s next debate topic.
There were, of course, rules to this. If, for instance, Pete gave me “Estes Kefauver,” I couldn’t just take the floor and say, “Oh, by the way: Estes Kefauver.” I had to find a way to work Estes Kefauver’s life and work into my speech in a way that somehow made sense. This was difficult because the five names seldom had much to do with one another or with the resolution under discussion.
Pete and I never told anyone else when we were doing this, which resulted in some awkward moments. On one occasion, I was giving a serious speech on a serious subject, but I had my list of five names and I was working them in, one by one.
Every time I did so, Pete (who was sitting in the front row of the audience) would start to laugh and the Society’s officers (who were seated on the rostrum behind me) would look at him funny, wondering why Pete was stifling chuckles at such an inappropriate time.
I have decided to introduce this concept into the corner of the blogosphere dedicated to intercollegiate athletics.
Each Thursday, I will post the list of five names to be used in the Weekly Weblogger Challenge. As various webloggers succeed in incorporating all five names into their postings during the course of the ensuing week, they should leave a comment below announcing their successful completion of the challenge. Each week, I will declare two winners: the weblogger who completed the challenge first and the weblogger who did the best job of fulfilling the challenge.
Here is this week’s inaugural list:
The Weekly Weblogger Challenge
Joe Theismann
Howard’s Rock
Patterson Hood
The Seneca Falls Declaration
Spiro T. Agnew
Who will rise to the occasion? What cleverness will issue from Orson Swindle and Paulwesterdawg? What political observations will appear at Hey Jenny Slater and Straight Bangin’? What keen insights will be offered at MGoBlog and The Corporate Headquarters of the San Antonio Gunslingers? Will Sexy Results! break radio silence to respond, despite being on hiatus?
I look forward to receiving the responses of my fellow webloggers in the comments section below.
Go ‘Dawgs! |
| | Posted 2/9/2006 12:24 PM - 916 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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