The subject is, of course, me, but as a brand-new baby, maybe five or six weeks old, and that is not what makes it my favorite. I can't really describe it to you, though, so I'll work on getting it scanned, which is not as easy as it once was because my boss in the library doesn't have her scanner hooked up anymore. But I'll work on it.

I have to tell you about the most tacky, tasteless billboard that ever existed in the entire world. It has a place of prominence on the right side of the busiest highway in the metropolitan area, and I have the pleasure of viewing it every time I drive home from my parents' house.

There's a guy in town called Dan, the Mortgage Man. As far as I know, Dan, the Mortgage Man is the name of the company, because that's all I've ever seen on any of the billboards. Usually they're tacky, but not tasteless. For example, his last billboard had a picture of him in a suit but with bare feet, and the billboard said, "He'll Knock Your Socks Off."

Now, however, the billboard has a huge blue and white tube of "Y2K Jelly" along with the phrase "Smooth Service in Any Millennium."

I am not kidding. If I had a digital camera, I'd take a picture of it for you. It's so awful I even considered calling Dan myself to tell him just how awful it is.

It doesn't help that directly across the highway from Dan's Y2K Jelly, on the left, you also get to look at one of the billboards that are part of this state's anti-smoking campaign, which is just a mouth with a hundred cigarette butts sticking out of it, and the board says, "Butt Munch."

Butt Munch and Y2K Jelly. It's just a little much for one stretch of highway.

Well, I'm back in class, for the last semester ever. On my plate this spring: Trusts & Estates, White Collar Crime, a Religious Liberty seminar, an Education Law seminar (in seminars, you write papers instead of taking an exam) and Internet Law.

The Religious Liberty class, which I had today, seems like it's going to be very interesting. The professor had us go around the room and say what our religious affiliation was and how familiar we are with that particular church. We have some Catholics, some Lutherans, one Methodist, one Mormon, a couple Evangelical, one Seventh-Day Adventist, one Presbyterian, one Episcopalian (that's me) and one agnostic.

He said he was disappointed that there were no Jewish people and no athiests, which of course would have rounded out the class quite well. But there seems to be enough variety to keep the class interesting. We jumped into all kinds of issues today, based on what the Constitution says about religious liberty (which is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."). We talked about where that liberty ends, what to do when children die because their parents follow a religion that prevents medical treatment, what to do when church and state clash (i.e., Jews in the military being prevented from wearing yarmulkes), what the Framers meant by "religion" in the first place, what makes life sacred.

Tra la la. Just another day in law school.

I'm going to my parents' house tonight to do laundry. It kind of creeps me out to be in the house alone (my parents are in Hilton Head until April) but I also kind of like it. I like to pretend that this nice big house (I mean relative to my apartment, my parents don't live in a mansion or anything) is actually mine.

I also kind of like that my parents are gone. I was talking about this with my therapist yesterday, because we've figured out that my relationship with them is at the root of a lot of my issues. I do like that they are close, after almost five years of being across the country from them, but the truth is that I don't need them to be this close. That's why moving back to Kansas City doesn't really bother me. It's strange, but I feel like I have a little more breathing room now that they're not here. They don't ever pressure me into spending time with them, but if I go more than one week without seeing them, I feel like I'm being an ungrateful, neglectful child, which is all completely in my head, but there it is.

The only thing that sucks about going home is I have to see Steve, the nosy next-door neighbor. It never fails that Steve is always out walking his dog or washing his car or getting the mail every time I pull in or out of the driveway, and he always has to chat more than just saying hello, and he calls me "Hon," which I hate hearing from people I don't know. Relatives and friends can call me any term of endearment they like and I don't mind, but no bizarro next-door neighbor man can call me that. I'm an adult, for God's sake.

He's not really that creepy or anything. I mean, he's married and has teenage kids, and I'm certainly not afraid of him. He's just a little too neighborly for me.

All right, I'm a bitch. I'm very anti-stranger. When I'm flying, I always settle into my seat and put on my headphones and get out my book and do everything in my power not to have to chat with my seatmate. I'm sure anyone else would say that Steve just being friendly, but I don't care.

"Hon" crosses the line, anyway.