Today's Featured Biography

 
Heath Miller

Well, I tried to do this one time before, but for some reason, it didn't get posted. I probably just got long winded and it timed out before I hit "Submit Data."

Let's start where our paths diverted. Shortly after graduating at good ol' MFHS, my parents sold the old place in Maroa and built a house in the Bloomington/Normal area. We lived in the appartments near the high school, just down the street from where Pressnal grew up for the summer.

From there I went to the University of Illinois to pursue a career in civil engineering. I had pledged a fraternity in the spring of our senior year. In retrospect, this was not exactly the best decision that I ever made, as two years later with my liver working only about half as well as it did before and my brain at only about a quarter of its prior capacity, I transferred to Illinois State University.

As a funny aside, for some crazy reason, I tried out for the cheer leading squad at U of I and made the JV squad, but transferred to ISU before the beginning of the football season. I did however make the varsity squad there and "tossed girls" for about a year before quitting.

Two years after transferring to ISU, I graduated with a degree in Business Administration. Since my beer drinking had not really subsided, my liver and brain were probably only functioning at about 10 - 15% by then, which means I could only recite pi to about one digit.

I took a year off from school after ISU to reflect on how far my educational experience had gotten me, as I was making a shade more than minimum wage at a computer store fixing Macs and throwing boxes at UPS in the evening (a little different than "tossing girls" - girls aren't quite as cube shaped and you get in trouble if you stomp on a girl, whereas other UPS workers laugh when you stomp on boxes)

About a year later, I moved to Houston and went to law school at South Texas College of Law. I had applied to about 20+ law schools in areas of the country where it was "warm." I only got accepted to one, and Houston is not "warm"; it's friggin' hot. Nonetheless, I was starting to get my act together a bit more, and I did pretty well; however, STCL is better known as a litigation school and I had started to gravitate towards tax law (yes, this confirms any rumors that may have circulated that I was not only a nerd but boring too).

Three years later, I graduated from STCL, took the bar exam in Texas, passed and moved to Washingto D.C. to attend Georgetown's law school. I was there for about a year and got an advanced law degree in tax with an emphasis in employee benefits. For those who don't know, if you take the nerdiest (if that's a word) of all accountants, you have CPAs, the nerdiest of the CPAs become tax lawyers and the nerdiest of them are benefits attorneys. The joke is you can tell an extraverted benefits lawyer, because he looks at your feet when he talks to you.

So, after Georgetown, I carpet bombed the country with resumes and got a job in Dallas with a firm called Haynes and Boone. While there, I met Tamara, my wife. She's way out of my league and only has one flaw - poor taste in men. About a year and a half later, shortly after transferring to a second firm (Baker Botts), Tamara and I got married and bought our first home.

I spent the next 7 years at Baker Botts and remodeling our first place. Roughly 3 years ago, our son, Tristan, was born. Since our little 2 bedroom/2 bath cottage was a bit small for the 3 of us (and the 2 dogs and 2 cats), we sold it and moved north east of town. At roughly the same time, I switched firms and joined Morgan Lewis, where I'm still working.

My wife is now expecting a little girl and is due sometime in January/February.

Other than that, nothing has changed, except I'm not in anywhere near as good as shape, I have a goatee and I'm bald as a cue ball.

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