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To pass time on the five-hour flight home, I bought the newest John Grisham book, “The Street Lawyer.” I’ve only ready one other Grisham book, and that was “The Firm” back when I was in the eighth grade. I must say, I am embarrassed that I haven’t read more novels in the four years of flying. It’s fun!

This book is all about smart lawyers doing smart things. I happen to be reading this; book the same time we are negotiating our contact with a web development company who’s going to help build the new version of lifeteen.com. So at night I read a few chapters of the book, then go into the studio the next day and pretend I am a lawyer.

For the record, I have to confess I hate reading contracts. But I want this new website to become a reality, so I have no choice but read through these contracts and try to make sense of them. It’s a rewarding feeling to decipher all the lingo and put things in order. I could never be a real lawyer, but it’s been fun to pretend.

I can’t believe the Red Sox won. They were down three games to none, and they went on to win four in a row. This makes me happy because the Yankees lost. I just can’t cheer for the Yankees. It’s like cheering for Microsoft. Why don’t they just finish off world domination by having the biggest merger ever: Yankees, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Christmas.

Most of my friends have graduated college now, and we all look back and are just thankful we made it through that mess. I work with high school students every day through our church, and you can’t help but wonder where all these “church kids” go after they graduate high school. They get their diploma, and we never see them again.

So my circle of friends has spent a lot of time this past year talking about how to reach out to college students.; So far, we don’t really have an idea. My roommate Matt Maher talks about it long after everyone else is done. He doesn’t ramble, but he speaks with the relentless conviction of a man on a mission. He is determined.

(Oh wow, I think that’s my old girlfriend.) I was getting lunch with my friends at my favorite restaurant in Arcadia, and she was sitting outside on the patio. My heart jumped inside of my chest.

I walked up to her table and said hello. She hopped up to give me a big hug. She; explained she just got back from her trip to Italy, and she recounted the details of the art and architecture. (She’s as cool as I remember.) It meant a lot to me to hear about how grew in her faith while she was out on her own, exploring the churches of Europe.

She opened up her sketchbook and pointed to her sketches. She’s now an illustrator for a local architecture company, and she still shows her work in galleries around town. She wasn’t self-consumed, but she was excited about life, and she wanted to share that with me. She’s such a beautiful person.

It was awkward to sit back down with my friends after being gone for almost twenty minutes. My friends wanted to taunt me about my thing for hot Catholic chics, but they held back. I didn’t have much to say either. I just ate my sandwich and thought about life.

I think Stephanie and I had the most clean breakup ever. Breakups are never easy, but we tried to do everything the right way, from way before we dated all the way up to now, long after it’s was over. Though we don’t see each other much, we’re still friends.

This is the way it is supposed to be.

It’s kind of weird to be around so many attractive girls and know there’s no chance of getting a date. I do have a girlfriend, so it’s not like I’m out shopping. But I didn’t realize that I was such a flirt until I was surrounded with all these girls that were absolutely off limits. They were nuns.

The sisters run Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee. This afternoon, the campus was open for high school seniors to come by to see what the school is all about. I’d met the sisters a month ago when I was in Nashville, and I thought they were really fun. So I’d been looking forward to coming back to do a talk at their college. After my talk was done, one of the sisters asked me if I wanted to see their house.

The Mother House is this huge museum-looking building where the sisters live. The building is actually a century-old boarding school. The ceilings were at least twenty feet high, and the wood floors made me want to waltz around the room. There were plenty of women there to danced with, but they absolutely had no interest in me. I just can’t explain what it was like to have that “dating tension” totally gone. There hearts were set one heaven.

On my way to the car, I saw some sisters playing out in the field. I’ve seen in movies how nuns fly, but I didn’t realize they played football and soccer. These sisters were in the “nun outfit” from head to toe–and they were slamming around on the grass. One sister in her twenties actually did a flip to throw the ball back into the field. I was so shocked I almost yelled out “holy sh!t”; but I caught myself.

Now I am on the long flight from Nashville to Phoenix. Most people are asleep on these late flights, so I don’t feel like I am smashed into a tube with a horde of angry strangers. As I’ve been writing this journal, I realize how much I respect those ladies. They are really giving their life to the world, and that inspires me to be a better man.