No, really: Heh.

Becky has been Instalanched.

I may have link-whored her to the Professor… hehe.

(That sounds mildly dirty, doesn’t it? Link-whoring your own wife out! Oh, the Hugh Manatee!)

P.S. She got more than 1,300 hits on Sunday, most of them between Glenn’s 10:37 PM post and midnight. She’ll get a lot more than that on Monday. Stats here.

Casey just posted a bunch of new awesome pictures of his octopus. For example:

Brian Foster, a fellow 3L at Notre Dame Law School and a frequent commenter here on BrendanLoy.com, has won a national writing competition:

Brian Foster (NDLS ’07) has been named the recipient of the 2006 James William Moore Federal Practice Award, a national award administered by Lexis Nexis and named after the original author of the leading treatise on federal civil practice and procedure, Moore’s Federal Practice. The award is intended to encourage and recognize outstanding scholarship in the area of federal civil procedure and practice.

In its call for papers for this award, Lexis Nexis states that the principal subject of the submitted paper must be federal civil practice and procedure, including the civil jurisdiction and venue rules of the federal courts. Papers focusing on the procedural aspects of certain types of substantive federal litigation are acceptable as are submissions on the topics of federal courts management, federal appellate procedure, and alternative dispute resolution.

Brian won the award based on his student note Serious Mischiefs: Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Services, Supplemental Jurisdiction and the Promise of Finley. The note originally appeared in Issue 5 of the 2006 Notre Dame Law Review.

I don’t know why the law-school community hasn’t gotten an e-mail from Peter Horvath about this. (But hey, on the bright side, at least we’re all clear on the university’s smoking policy.) I just stumbled upon it on the Law School homepage.

Anyway… congrats, Brian!!

My brother-in-law Casey is renowned in the family for his ability to eat large quantities of food at a single sitting. But he’s got nothing on his octopus.

As promised, Casey has posted details about, and pictures of, his new octopus.

Casey is getting his octopus today. He plans to post details and photos late in the day. Eventually, he may set up an OctoCam (an idea pushed by yours truly). Stay tuned.

V and Kristy are too cool for school:

Heh. That photo was taken while furniture shopping — which, believe it or not, was totally fun. K and V are very entertaining even when doing seemingly mundane things. For example, they both literally started squealing with excitement when they saw this couch.

Anyway, needless to say, we’re having a good time. More photos here, including some from the rodeo, such as:

Check out this adorable photo of Logan!! I guess Shannon gave it to Kristy for Xmas. Awww.

Just got back from golfing on the Prospector Course here at Superstition Mountain. I teamed up with Ginny in a friendly scramble against Ted and Casey, and we won by four strokes, thanks mostly to my amazing golf skills. :) Okay, okay, the vast majority of the shots we used were Ginny’s (that would be the same Ginny who competed in the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur earlier this year), but I did make a few putts — and gave Ginny a good “read” on several other putts that I almost hit — and I even got in a couple of decent drives, despite being generally pretty awful (and, perhaps more to the point, inexperienced; I’ve only golfed a few times in my life, and not at all in the last couple of years).

For some reason, I was much better with the pitching wedge today than with any other club; it got to the point where I was using it to tee off on par-3s and short part-4s. (The preceding sentence is gibberish to non-golf types, but I think it will be hilarious to avid golfers.) With the driver and other long clubs, I was more liable to either whiff or seriously mis-hit the ball, or else make solid contact but hit it waaaay off to the right. (Apropos of which, I hit a house off the right fairway of one hole, and almost hit another. Hehe. Luckily, no damage was done.)

Anyway, it was fun. Here’s a photo of Casey teeing off, with Ginny watching in the foreground, and the Superstition Mountains in the background:

We went hiking again today, this time with the parental units coming along as well, and this time on a much longer and more challenging trail than the previous day’s trek. As opposed to our 50-minute stroll on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day we did the Bluff Spring Loop, which is a 9.1-mile trail with several relatively steep uphill sections. (Here’s a map.)

It took us just over five hours, which is exactly what the book says it should — not bad! (We usually take a good 125% or more of the recommended time.) And we saw a tarantula!

He was pretty small. Here’s a video:

Creepy crawly creatures aside, it’s a damn scenic hike. For example:

More pictures in the full photo gallery. And you can also view photos of the same loop in 2004 when just Becky, Ginny and I hiked it.

P.S. If you’re wondering why we were hiking at 9:00 AM instead of opening presents or going to church… it’s the Zak family tradition to open presents on Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas morning. It’s taken me a while to adjust to this, but I’ve finally gotten used to it. :) As for going to church, Ted and Ginny went to the Christmas Eve vigil mass Sunday night — and, well, Becky and I didn’t go at all, but personally, I think spending some quality time appreciating the awesomeness of nature is at least as good a way of giving glory to God as going to church.

Anyway, speaking of Christmas presents, I got a bunch of cool stuff, but of particular note (in addition to the NCAA Tournament tickets mentioned previously) is the Apple Store gift card from Ted and Ginny, which will allow me to buy an iPod with video — my first non-Shuffle iPod ever. So, stay tuned for some giddy posts about that in the coming days. :)

Becky got an iPod, too — a blue nano, from me (but also sort of partially from Dane, since his wedding gift card helped pay for it; thanks, Dane!) — so we’ll both doubtless have tons of fun buying cool iPod accessories and such. That’s an aspect of the Apple experience that I’ve been missing out on until now, but not anymore! Woohoo!

Oh, and I also got a copy of the Spike Lee movie that I was in. Hehe.

…to start “looking” for the first star.

Becky, Casey and I went hiking on a short loop near the First Water Trailhead this afternoon. ‘Twas fun, and a good opportunity to engage in a little good-natured schadenfreude toward people in colder climes who are huddling around a fire this Christmas Eve. Hehe.

More photos in my full photo gallery.

Moments ago, I went into the guest room to retrieve — for purposes of cleaning — the fish bowl housing Becky’s and my last living aquatic bet, Patriot the betta fish. Upon inspecting the bowl, I discovered that, alas, Patriot has passed away. He was promptly given a dignified burial at sea.

Becky bought Patriot from Wal-Mart in March of 2005, when she was working at a temp job on campus. She kept him in a tiny fishbowl in her office. Once the school year, and the job, ended, she brought Patriot home (and we got him a bigger bowl). We were under the impression that store-bought betta fish don’t normally live past six to nine months (although, according to Wikipedia, they can actually live 2-5 years), so we were mildly surprised when Patriot lived long enough that we had to make provisions to have someone feed him during our wedding and honeymoon last December/January… and we were downright shocked that he lived long enough to make the trek to Arizona — and back! — this past summer. (He was the record-breaking fifth pet in the car that made our May and August road trips the most animal-packed ever.) We began to refer to him as the “immortal fish.”

But alas, he was not truly immortal. He may have been the only survivor of the great Zak/Loy “fish holocaust” of 2005 — a consequence of the fact that he wasn’t in the saltwater tank that suffered a rather severe environmental disaster — but he was bound to die someday. This was his time, and now he moves on to the Giant Fishbowl in the Sky (or Sea?) where even Siamese fighting fish (another term for bettas, natch) live in peace and harmony with their fellow fishies.

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering about Patriot’s name… it came from some guy standing in line at Wal-Mart when Becky bought him. This gentleman observed Patriot’s blue-green and purple coloration, mistook the purple for “red” (hey, it’s Wal-Mart, you can’t expect too much :), apparently invented some “white” out of nowhere, and declared, “Hey, it’s red, white, and blue. That’s patriotic.” And thus a legend was born.

Anyway, R.I.P., Patriot. You were a good fish.

P.S. I don’t know whether Fish Heaven is anywhere near Hamster Heaven, but if it is, maybe Patriot and Thermy can find some way to play together. Granted, it’s hard to picture how that would work, but the Lord works in mysterious ways, right?