Highlights
...of the last week-and-a-half or so:
- Wednesday last week (the 17th), I won a domestic violence case partly by way of using a Crawford objection to keep a hearsay statement from being admitted into evidence. Like a lot of domestic violence cases, it was pretty weak to begin with, but I still thoroughly enjoyed successfully arguing Crawford. The Supreme Court has not given defense attorneys a whole lot to work with since the Warren court of the 1960s, so Crawford v. Washington has been a welcome addition to our toolkit these last few years.
- I've had a lot of my mother's family in town visiting since last weekend, which has been nice, but a little surreal. It still feels a bit odd interacting adult-to-adult with relatives I saw all the time as a child, but not very much as I've gotten older. Well, that and the fact my relatives are just a bit odd. Go figure.
- I saw Burn After Reading. It was mildly amusing. Not bad, but nothing I'd rave about either.
- Tuesday morning was spent sitting in a civil docket waiting for a motion hearing that never really happened. Mostly it was dull and a reminder why I don't do that much civil litigation, though I did get to see a fairly interesting motion hearing in a high-dollar-value and bitter divorce case, with good attorneys on each side. Geez, rereading that last sentence I realize I must sound like a coroner talking with excitement about someone's exoticly gruesome death.
- Part of the weekend was spent doing yard work, including borrowing my dad's lawnmower and cutting the grass. I've also bought a rake, some work gloves, and a pair of long-handled clippers called "loppers" or some such. I actually felt quite accomplished when it was all done. When the hell did I develop this suburban householder thing? It's a bit frightening.
- This past week at work has been depressing and stressful, or perhaps just depressingly stressful. It's not that I had some big deadline or major court appearance, I just had this feeling of being on a treadmill with no speed control. Too many files clamoring for attention, each one for the most part needing only some minor task completed, but buried in a stack of its siblings. It always frustrates me to have some file that needs work and has to get put off for days while I do other things, only to finally do it and realize it was a 10 minute task, I simply had to get to it. Well, a big chunk of the stress had to do with one particular file that has turned out to be hopeless, worthless, and a huge drain on my time and energy. I'm at least glad to have gotten the ball rolling on dismissing that case and closing that file.
- I've also been simultaneously fascinated and distressed by the news lately. I'm too much of a news junkie, which I realized around 12:30am the other night when I couldn't sleep and was trying to find something mindless on TV to help me relax. After catching myself gravitating back to CNN several times, I settled on the Daily Show. Yes, the Daily Show is what I ended up watching as I sat in bed trying to get my mind off the news. FAIL. I'm going to avoid posting any thoughts on the financial crisis and how to respond to it right now; that's a whole different blog post and I don't want to get sucked into pounding out a 3 hour tirade no one would want to read. Just look at my attempt at a "brief" comment on Abbot's lj post about it.
- I've started poking around the Cato Institute's website, and I'm becoming more and more intrigued with that organization. Thinking back to my old liberal activist college freshman self, I can just hear Dr. Otteson (and Charlie Thronson) laughing "I told you so." I still have a deep and abiding dislike of the Republican Party, though. :-)
- Friday morning I was very happy to see that certain friends who were worried about their bar results passed the bar exam. Not everyone I know passed, but that doesn't change the regard I have for them. The bar exam is a thoroughly miserable experience, and anyone who's taken it knows how entirely possible it is to be an extremely smart and capable lawyer and nevertheless fail that exam. I've got plenty of sympathy for anyone having to live through that torture more than once.
- Last night, I finally decided to pack it in and call it a night after ending up at a dive bar (which I generally like) where some obnoxious, hipsterish drunks were throwing half-full beer bottles, then chairs, and finally launching bottle rockets inside the fucking bar. Who knows what the hell they got up to after I left, I certainly wasn't eager to find out.
Next weekend: Tuscaloosa. :-) I'm looking forward to a criminal law seminar on Friday at the law school (gotta get X number of hours each year to stay licensed) and a DJ Bin Rockin houseparty saturday night.
- Wednesday last week (the 17th), I won a domestic violence case partly by way of using a Crawford objection to keep a hearsay statement from being admitted into evidence. Like a lot of domestic violence cases, it was pretty weak to begin with, but I still thoroughly enjoyed successfully arguing Crawford. The Supreme Court has not given defense attorneys a whole lot to work with since the Warren court of the 1960s, so Crawford v. Washington has been a welcome addition to our toolkit these last few years.
- I've had a lot of my mother's family in town visiting since last weekend, which has been nice, but a little surreal. It still feels a bit odd interacting adult-to-adult with relatives I saw all the time as a child, but not very much as I've gotten older. Well, that and the fact my relatives are just a bit odd. Go figure.
- I saw Burn After Reading. It was mildly amusing. Not bad, but nothing I'd rave about either.
- Tuesday morning was spent sitting in a civil docket waiting for a motion hearing that never really happened. Mostly it was dull and a reminder why I don't do that much civil litigation, though I did get to see a fairly interesting motion hearing in a high-dollar-value and bitter divorce case, with good attorneys on each side. Geez, rereading that last sentence I realize I must sound like a coroner talking with excitement about someone's exoticly gruesome death.
- Part of the weekend was spent doing yard work, including borrowing my dad's lawnmower and cutting the grass. I've also bought a rake, some work gloves, and a pair of long-handled clippers called "loppers" or some such. I actually felt quite accomplished when it was all done. When the hell did I develop this suburban householder thing? It's a bit frightening.
- This past week at work has been depressing and stressful, or perhaps just depressingly stressful. It's not that I had some big deadline or major court appearance, I just had this feeling of being on a treadmill with no speed control. Too many files clamoring for attention, each one for the most part needing only some minor task completed, but buried in a stack of its siblings. It always frustrates me to have some file that needs work and has to get put off for days while I do other things, only to finally do it and realize it was a 10 minute task, I simply had to get to it. Well, a big chunk of the stress had to do with one particular file that has turned out to be hopeless, worthless, and a huge drain on my time and energy. I'm at least glad to have gotten the ball rolling on dismissing that case and closing that file.
- I've also been simultaneously fascinated and distressed by the news lately. I'm too much of a news junkie, which I realized around 12:30am the other night when I couldn't sleep and was trying to find something mindless on TV to help me relax. After catching myself gravitating back to CNN several times, I settled on the Daily Show. Yes, the Daily Show is what I ended up watching as I sat in bed trying to get my mind off the news. FAIL. I'm going to avoid posting any thoughts on the financial crisis and how to respond to it right now; that's a whole different blog post and I don't want to get sucked into pounding out a 3 hour tirade no one would want to read. Just look at my attempt at a "brief" comment on Abbot's lj post about it.
- I've started poking around the Cato Institute's website, and I'm becoming more and more intrigued with that organization. Thinking back to my old liberal activist college freshman self, I can just hear Dr. Otteson (and Charlie Thronson) laughing "I told you so." I still have a deep and abiding dislike of the Republican Party, though. :-)
- Friday morning I was very happy to see that certain friends who were worried about their bar results passed the bar exam. Not everyone I know passed, but that doesn't change the regard I have for them. The bar exam is a thoroughly miserable experience, and anyone who's taken it knows how entirely possible it is to be an extremely smart and capable lawyer and nevertheless fail that exam. I've got plenty of sympathy for anyone having to live through that torture more than once.
- Last night, I finally decided to pack it in and call it a night after ending up at a dive bar (which I generally like) where some obnoxious, hipsterish drunks were throwing half-full beer bottles, then chairs, and finally launching bottle rockets inside the fucking bar. Who knows what the hell they got up to after I left, I certainly wasn't eager to find out.
Next weekend: Tuscaloosa. :-) I'm looking forward to a criminal law seminar on Friday at the law school (gotta get X number of hours each year to stay licensed) and a DJ Bin Rockin houseparty saturday night.