Delaware Family Court

After floating for a while in a sea of rejection letters, somebody finally dropped me a life jacket. I have been selected for a call back interview with Delaware's Probate and Family Court. This is a great opportunity because as a judicial clerk, I would gain tremendous experience in how the court works as well as acquire more job options in the future. The clerkship is a one year program. My interview is on Oct. 19 so Tisha, Alexander, and I will be driving down to the De/Pa area for the weekend. I also heard from Blank Rome LLP this weekend and they are also considering me for an entry level associate. Please keep us in your prayers.

September

God sends children for another purpose than merely to keep up the race- to enlarge our hearts; to make us unselfish and full of kindly sympathies and affections; to give our souls higher aims and to call out all our faculties; to extend enterprise and exertion; to bring 'round our firesides bright faces and happy smiles and loving, tender hearts. My soul blesses the great Father every day that He has gladdened the earth with little children.

-Mary Hewitt

Good Friends and Good Times

Guys night out with Devaka and Josh. They are my two good friends from Harvard. I haven't seen Devaka in two years and we picked up as if he never left. The three of us had some good times together.

3 for 3

Today I was 3 for 3 in our BC Law Softball game. The score was tied 5 to 5 in the bottom of the last inning. We had two outs and a man on first and second. I stepped to the plate pretty confident. I played well a few weeks ago and I finally started hitting the ball exactly where I wanted it to go. Since I never swing at the first pitch, I took a strike and then swung at a ball that was way too high. Stepping out of the batters box, I gathered myself and mumbled "keep your eye on the ball, Branden." The next pitch was perfect and I smacked it over the third baseman's glove for a single. With the bases loaded, Melissa hit a ball that the pitcher couldn't handle and the guy on third base came home, winning the game for us. Well, not technically winning the game for us. We had to forfeit the game because only 5 players showed up from our team. The rule is that you need at least 9 of your own team players to show up in order to play a official game. Either way it was a great game.

Meet Alexander Grant Brooks

It's a boy! Click on the picture to see more of Alex.

To commensurate this joyous event, click on the link below:
Baby_Heartbeat_2.mp3

What To Do With 756?

Designer Mark Ecko, who purchased Barry Bond's 756th home run ball, has set up a Web site "Vote 756.com" that lets visitors vote on three options for the ball:

A) Give it to the Hall of Fame
B) Brand it with an asterisk before sending it to the Hall of Fame
C) Blast it into space on a rocket ship


Click on the banner to vote.

Is This The Face of a Lawyer?

I was stopped in the elevator yesterday by a gentleman who asked me, "If I was a lawyer?" I had to think about it for a few seconds and then I replied, "Not yet?" He then proceed to talk about O.J. Simpson but it had me thinking about my transformation from a college kid to a lawyer. Granted, wearing a shirt and tie makes me look professional but what makes a person ask me if I'm a lawyer rather than asking me if I'm a banker or a computer consultant. Two summers ago, I was standing in front of the Delaware's State Building waiting for my ride, when a young lady asked me if I was a lawyer. Before I could answer, she started talking about her cousin who was framed and is currently serving time down state. At that time, I just finished my first year of law school so I told her that maybe I can help her in a few years.

I guess the lawyer vibe could be coming from the briefcase that I carry. The base-ball glove brown Coach brief was a gift from Rev Rice for being the Chapel President at Ursinus College. He gave me a gift certificate for my hard work and I went to the Coach outlet store in Lancaster, Pa. to find a bag and pay the difference.

I had this bag since 2002 and it still looks brand new. I didn't use it much at Harvard but I started carrying it in law school and always tote it along on my interviews and internships.

Preppy Is As Preppy Does

I am truly a obsessive person. When my mind is set on one thing, that one thing usually consumes me until I have it or accomplish it. Take for instance: Tatnall. My first visit to The Tatnall School was in 6th grade to watch Ashely Deadwyler play basketball. I marveled at the cleanness of the school and the astuteness of the students but the thing that put me over the edge was the LL Bean book bags that were left outside of the lockers. Coming from a public school where if you dropped a pencil it would be gone before it hit the ground, these book bags represented not only a better school but a better life. I dreamed day and night about attending that school. I wrote "Tatnall" all over my quizzes and probably had something with Tatnall on it on my wall. Later, this same obsessiveness would apply to Harvard, Kappa Alpha Psi, and Law School. Now, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing because this obsessive behavior often drives me to achieve accomplishments beyond my wildest dreams, but I must admit that sometimes it spills into other aspects of my life. Ask anybody that truly knows me about my hobbies and they will tell you that they change every summer. Every summer since High school, I would obsessive over something. Whether its a new sport, a new video game, making beats, playing the trumpet, or clothing fads, I would be completely consumed by the new hobby or whatever. However, the one thing that I always come back to is preppyness. I may dabble in BBC/Ice cream clothes or buy a extreme amount of soccer jerseys but at the end of the day, I always feel more comfortable in a blazer and my brown loafers. Tatnall enforced a loose dress code on its students but somehow I subconsciously internalized this dress code on myself. I tried to rebelled in college by wearing basketball jerseys and sweat pants but by my sophomore year, my preppyness reared its head to the point where my nickname was Abercrombie. Since college, J.Crew has become synonymous with causal wear and LL Bean with reliable foul weather gear. In Law School, I co-founded bow tie Wednesdays and became well known for wearing khakis pants with the hunting dog prints on rainy days. I guess the moral of the story is once you go prep, you never go back.

No News Is Good News

I just realized that I haven't posted any baby news in a while. However, in my defense, I'm waiting for the ultimate news which will come on September 21. That is the day of our ultrasound and the revealing of our child's gender. Stay tuned.

Keep Pouring on the Experience

I really love my job at Grayer & Dilday. Today was only my second day on the job and I got the chance to interview a client in a child custody case. It's a very difficult case but I love the complexity of the issues. I'm gaining lots of experience at this firm and I truly love the mentoring that I'm receiving from Mr. Grayer & Mr. Dilday. Tomorrow I will head to work for a few hours and then go back to school for an interview with a New Hampshire law firm, McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton. Keep me in your prayers. The picture above is from my first hiking trip to New Hampshire's Mount Whiteface.

Hot Time in the City

Its was 94 degrees in Boston today and things were definitely heating up. I had a interview with Grayer & Dilday, a small firm that practices family law, for semester in practice and I was pretty excited about this opportunity. My good friend, Christine Lee, worked there last summer and had nothing but praises for this firm, so I anxiously got on the T and went over my resume in order to prepare myself for the interview. The interview was at 2:30 but since it was so hot outside, Tisha gave me a ride to Davis Square so I didn't have to wait outside for the bus in my suit. As we got closer and closer to the Park Street, I felt a mixture of nervousness and excitement so I pulled out my copy of The Catcher in the Rye, that I keep in my briefcase, and read a few pages to calm down. However, just then, the T stopped on the bridge just before the Charles MGH. After a few minutes, a voice came over the load speaker and announced that there was a communication problem on the red line and all trains were not permitted to move. Well, to make a long story short, we sat there for over 40 minutes waiting for the system to come back on. I called Grayer and told them my situation and they assured me that they would wait until I arrived. When the T finally started to inch towards the Charles MGH stop, the MBTA worker announced, "You get out now and walk to your destination or you can ride to the next stop but we're not sure how long its going to be before we move again." I sat there and thought about it for a few seconds and decided to walk from Charles MGH to Downtown Crossing. If any of you know Boston, this is not a nice little walk in the park. It's mostly up hill and accompanying the fact that I was wearing a suit in 94 degrees weather, needless to say, I was pretty sweaty by the time I got there. It took me a little while to find the place but once I got there, I gained my composer and knocked it out of the park. I start on Monday. I also have a crazy story to tell about the ride home but I'll spare you the details.

Downgrade

With the rising cost of Cable and our new edition on the way, Tisha and I decided to downgrade our cable package. And when I say downgrade; I mean downgrade. A few years ago, we had HBO, Encore, and the sports package but in the name of saving money we decided to cut our cable bill and take away the premium channels. I didn't go into too much of a withdraw because I still had CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, TLC and the Discovery Channel. However, this time we are going all the way down to basic cable, which consist of NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS and a few other local broadcast stations. This is definitely going to be a big year for me. Many changes are in my future.

Mr. Heisman

Mr. Heisman and I go back a long way. I first fell in love with the trophy in 7th grade and the love affair continued until I got to graduate school. Up until that point, I knew the history of the trophy and could recite most of the winners as if I was reciting a Shakespeare's sonnet.
I even did my final on Heisman Trophy winners for my computer programming class. The final was to create a program that worked and I wrote a simple "If-then" program that computed the Heisman trophy winners when you typed in a year or visa versa. I got an "A" in the class. That's why I was so surprised when I walked into one of the buildings at BC and saw Doug Flutie's 1984 Heisman sitting right there in the lobby. My heart skipped a beat as I examined the trophy that I dreamed about winning in Jr. High school and High School, but once reality sat in, I realized that I would probably never see one yet alone touch one. However, thanks to BC, another one of my dreams was fulfilled. Once again, I think this is another example of God telling me that I'm on the right track of life.