Sorry for the hiatus, but I just couldn't get my creative juices flowing over the holidays. My abundant spare time was monopolized by second-story Christmas lights and a nine-foot pre-lighted evergreen that broke down into four "easy-to-manage" pieces, each roughly the size of Oprah. I tried to sell the kids on a Christmas Ficus, but they weren't buying.

With Christmas now safely stowed away in $200 worth of Rubbermaid totes, I'm ready to hit the ground running and get back to being a court reporter. Trouble is, what the hell happened to all the work? Everyone I talk to in Houston, reporters, videographers, even lawyers, seem to be in the same boat. December and January are always deader than fried chicken, but I'm on a run of luck that's approaching the magnitude of the Great Dallas Drought of 1993. The good news is if the Supreme Court upholds the 10-pitch ruling, a 10% paycut on my current pageload equals precisely dick, nada, zilch. I've finally found a way to beat the beancounting bureaucrats... just stop turning pages!

Enough crepe-hanging on my part. On the lighter side, I got a call from an old friend today who took a deposition where, no joke, "The Lollipop Guild" was a party. He actually had the opportunity to ask counsel, "Do you represent The Lollipop Guild?" Unfortunately the attorney didn't respond in a falsetto with a refrain from the Wizard of Oz, but you couldn't make up a scenario any more perfect than that.

"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy." -- Edgar Bergen