Dirkmonster

Overheard in the Storm

This is one of those winter rains you get in Nashville that go on for three days cause all sorts of floods.  This is the kind of rainstorm in which you'll find out where your house is weakest.  This is the kind of storm that interrupts prime time programming to talk about flash flood warnings in 26 TN and KY counties.  And to hear these dire predictions you'll need to turn the TV up since the downpour on the skylight windows drowns everything else out.

Overheard during a time like this:

"And please, for the love of dry pants, beware of the standing water."

"Be careful out there as you make your way to work this morning."

"If you live in a trailer next to a creek, you'll soon be living in a trailer in Arkansas."

"Just be glad it isn't 20 degrees cooler - this would all be snow and Nashville would be wiped off the face of the earth."

"Al Gore says 'I told you so'!" GLOBAL WARMING IS TO BLAME.

"Isn't el Nino grown up by now?"

"I can't come to work because of seasonal affective disorder."

And it just keeps on pouring...

No lawyer jokes, please

My cousin Victor is a defense attorney in Wisconsin.  This past week he emailed me about making "Plantingas in the News" (see the RSS feed in the margin of this blog).  You see, he represented an associate pastor at a Waukesha, WI church who's accused of having an affair with a woman who was seeing him for marriage counseling. Vic was quoted in a story on the charges that appeared on Madison.com.

"He will not be returning to the ministry," his lawyer Victor Plantinga said...Plantinga said he has been negotiating with the district attorney's office on the possibility of a plea bargain.

Growing up, I remember Vic had a knack for giving good advice.  And, of course, a career change and a plea deal is about the best advice his client could take right about now.

Back to the email Victor sent me, adding some color to the story:

One occupational hazard of being a criminal defense attorney is that the public only hears your name when it is linked to some unsavory character.  I got a lot of press when a guy I represented got over 800 years.  Unless he was an Old Testament character, I don’t think he will see the light of day.  I should note that the Presbyterian pastor in the article was not in the Presbyterian church that I attend, nor in the larger association of churches.  It is an off-shoot of the Presbyterian USA.  Speaking of ministers, I also represented a Lutheran minister who was caught vandalizing another Lutheran Church in the area.  This might shock you, but there was a fair amount of recreational drinking that happened just before that.

Doesn't shock me a bit ;)  I know who I'm going to when if I get into trouble.