And in a moment of utter nonsense, I entered a trial competition at school. The school enters a total of sixteen students in three different national trial competitions, so they give us a modified version of last year's case to use to compete for those spots.

Marissa and I decided to give it a shot. 32 people are trying out, so our odds are 50/50, but she's currently working for the DA, and I used to work for the PD, so we've both had court experience and feel pretty confident about it. We'll work as a team but get graded individually, so even if one of us screws up the other has shot.

The kicker in all of this is that I never ever wanted to be a litigator. I used to say that all the time, when I was applying to school and even throughout my first year: I didn't know what I wanted to do, I only knew what I didn't want to do, and that was be a trial attorney.

Now I don't know.

And I don't want to be a public defender anymore, but it was the "public" nature of the work that turned me off, not the courtroom. So we'll just see.

I was going through this huge stupid box of videotapes I have. Of course, typical me, half of them don't have labels on them, and I'm looking for blank tapes to use because I tape everything, whether I'm actually watching it or not. I'm sick that way.

Anyway, I took a few that had no labels and popped them in to see what they were.

The first one was episodes of the second or third season of Party of Five. When that show first came out, it was questionable whether or not it would be renewed, so I taped it from the very beginning. (Actually, it was my father who told me to watch it. He used to run a Fox affiliate and had seen the show at some meeting before it aired, and told me he thought I'd like it.) Anyway, it was habit I never really got out of until last year, so now I have all these tapes full of this show that's even in reruns now, so there's really no reason to have them.

The other one was the Rosie O'Donnell show where she had the cast of Jerry Maguire on, and it was the first time she met Tom Cruise, and she was all nervous and crazy. The interview itself was very cute. I remember watching it in my boss's office in L.A., it was like this big deal at the time. Her show was still really new and getting someone like him on was really big, plus she had this huge crush on him. He was very modest and cute.

I think I'll keep that one. I'm insane, I know. I have Hugh Grant's first Leno show after the "incident," the Letterman show where Farrah Fawcett was all whacked out, and the one with Madonna where she wouldn't stop swearing, the Monica Lewinsky interview, Bryant Gumbel's last Today show (which was actually quite funny, they had Prince on all dressed like him, with the glasses and the suit), Duchovny on SNL (I have a whole tape that's nothing but David Duchovny and Chris O'Donnell interviews... my mid-90's crushes), tons of "X-Files," about a dozen of my favorite "Moonlighting episodes, and five seasons of "Party of Five."

Obviously, the "Party of Fives" are the first to go. It's not like I ever watch any of the other stuff either (except the "Moonlighting"s, which I like to pop in if I feel like vegging on Saturday afternoon and there's nothing else on). I'm such a pack rat.

I read about a solution to packrattedness once. You're supposed to put all this junk you don't think you need anymore in a box, tape it shut, write the date on it, and put it in your closet or wherever. If one year goes by and you don't open the box, you're supposed to chuck it in the trash without opening it.

Yeah, right. Like I would EVER have the self-control to do that.

And please, won't everybody join me in wishing a happy 32nd birthday to my brother? Thank you. Happy Birthday, bro!!

Actually, I think that if I had to tell one person in the world about this journal, it would be him. He'd think it was really cool.