Legal Quandary

Indiana On My Mind

I'm back - just in time to take the MPRE tomorrow morning. Yippee.

Some random observations from this trip:

Indiana has one of the worst systems for renewing your driver's license and license plates. I spent 2 HOURS sitting in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles office Tuesday afternoon waiting to transfer title and get new plates for my dad's car. When we lived in TVPNM, I never spent more than 15 minutes in the DMV office. Any city/state that can bicker about a monorail for years, fund it, and then ultimately shoot it down after spending a boatload of money is not a model of efficiency. A note to Governor Mitch Daniels - if Washington State can figure out a way to make vehicle registration and titling run efficiently, Indiana should be able to do it. Also - removing both the clocks and the number system is a dirty trick. Don't think people don't notice.

I come from short people. I have no idea where my height comes from, but I TOWER over the rest of my family. It's so weird. In my grandparent's wedding photo, the two of them were very petite - and the maid of honor and best man towered over them.

My grandfather was a fabulous photographer. We have a filing cabinet full of portraits and wedding photos he shot - though most people knew him only as the Sports Editor for one of the newspapers in town. As we were preparing for the visitation the other day, we dug out lots of photos of the family and of my grandmother - including one really racy one where she was dressed (as far as we could see - it was a head and shoulders shot) only in pearls. When you consider that my grandparents were married in 1938, I'm sure that photo was absolutely scandalous at the time.

It was strange sitting in church for the funeral. It's an old German Lutheran church. The same baptismal font I was baptized in was sitting at the front of the church. All the inscription was in German, but I was too far away to be able to read it. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with sin. There are statues of Jesus and 4 saints (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) at the front of the church. Their names are all in German too. (Mathaus, Marcus, Lucas & Johannes). How did they choose which 4 got to be up there with Jesus? (Yeah...I'm an idiot and a bad Catholic. Those are the books of the Gospel.) My aunt was married in that church, and I remember spending a lot of time looking at those saints during the ceremony. It was a really long ceremony. My grandfather's funeral was there, and I probably looked at the saints then too.

When my aunt & uncle went in to make the arrangements for my grandmother's service, the pastor pulled my her membership card. There was a record of her church attendance and communion dating back to 1963. How's that for a permanent record? She joined that church in 1941, so I have to wonder where the first 22 years are recorded.

posted by Legal Quandary at 22:01