What happened the past three days???

I took a trip to Texas this weekend and I got back this afternoon. My brother was getting sworn in as a lawyer in Texas so we went down to see him take his oath in the state capital Austin. I would like to show a few pictures over at The Eye.

In anycase we were at a stadium with his family on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. This ceremony was presided over by the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Appeals. There were moments which seemed to take too long such as the introduction of the Texas Law School deans and the justice on the Supreme and Appeals courts as well as other prominent attorneys and the top scorers on the Texas bar exam. In additon my brother allowed us to take home a copy of the oath he and those other lawyers took to become an officer of the courts. I'll share that with you here too.

Before I go further the night we arrived in Austin, I had some of the best tacos ever at Pappasito's Cantino. Texas style tacos they were big with lots of lettuce and tomatoes. I had to eat some beans and rice but when I was done with those tacos, I couldn't eat anything else. Before that I had some nice nachos, because our server threw away our nachos he gave us a fresh bag and hopefully we'll use those in the future. These tacos were the real deal, more so than the toacos were at Pepe's. I still thank Pepe's for being the type of tacos that caused me to reject Taco Bell.

Moving forward we left the ceremony to look around the grounds of the Texas state capitol. A reddish structure, with statues of Texas state history especially one statue of Texas' time in the Confederate States of America. There was a memorial to Texas Police Officers and a stone for the military personnel who were Killed and Missing in Action. There was this historic tree on the grounds of the state capitol which was being held up by steel wires. It's still alive but most of the branch are resting on the ground.

Oh yeah I want to mention something. I got a good question for the people of Illinois. I may post this over at Illinoize. This is where I'm coming from.

Texas is known as the "Lone Star State". On many of the expressway overpasses there were either imprints of the state of Texas or the "Lone Star" that Texas is known for. My brother told us that Texas is a very proud state, his wife said that Texans has thier own pledge to their own "Lone Star" flag.

Anyway this is my fourth trip to Texas. The first time we only passed thru. We went thru the panhandle and spent the night in Amarillo. The next trip we spent a night with my brother and his wife who were staying at Houston where my brother was going to law school at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. Unfortunately for me and my mother we didn't get to make it to his graduation, our uncle was the only family that made it. How fitting that we were able to actually make it to his oath as a lawyer.

The second trip was this past Christmas. And that's not a bad time to go, especially since it's cold in Chicago and it's cooler down in Texas. We didn't do much just stayed at his nice home in the Dallas suburbs until it was time to take a train back to Chicago.

This time around Texas was warmer but not steaming. Kind of glad too since I don't want to be around a lot of heat anyway. Still this was an interesting trip to make and it was great to see aspiring hot shot lawyers take their oaths to start their professions.

Anyway that's where I've been stay tuned for photographs!!!