the great english breakfast explosion of 2008

That's how I'll remember today. The tea-tin, top unsecure and upside-down in the cabinet, carelessly grabbed, and cascading e-breakfast everywhere. I haven't been in NP often enough to know why--probably I put it back there in a frenzied attempt to find the surface of my dinner table. Or some tea-spilling set-up bandit made me a visit. Anyhow, there is now small round e-breakfast spheres sprinkled into my wishdasher and the kitchen floor. The dishes will probably come out with a slight accent. On the whole, though, no big loss. As RLY once called to my attention, e-breakfast is rather boring. Nothing compared to, say, my beloved russian caravan. Which I am now out of, alas. Tea.

Here's some more about January 5, 2008. It is the day of Lulu's first carrot. I made the mistake of giving her a big carrot--mostly she seemed to enjoy shredding it and leaving the shreds on the rug. But maybe her teeth are cleaner. Today the carrot, tomorrow, the stick.

January 5, 2008, in NP smells like poop and cigarettes. The cigarettes are because I have a smoky neighbor. I can't account for the poop stink. It only occasionally smells like poop around here. Wrong wind direction, perhaps. Or maybe the times when there was snow that I was not prepared with the plastic bag have come back to haunt me now that it's melting a bit. Regardless of the stink's provenance, today NP deserves AAMcM's moniker of North Poop.

Today is also the day after the day of Lulu's first trip to the NP dog park. Her favorite new friend, and mine, was a baby bloodhound pup. She and Razor (the bh pup) were both a little shy of the older animals (regardless of size). She also enjoyed playing with Britney, a dog of the small yappy variety.

I have a final divorce hearing and a social security appeal hearing this coming week. Final divorce hearings, when there has been a property and/or child custody settlement, as there hs been in this case, are great hearings to have early on in one's career. No cross-examining necessary, about 10 minutes max of routine questions for the plaintiff (e.g. "Is the marriage irretrievably broken?", a ridiculous statutory necessity--it's not like anyone's ever going to bother saying no.) and the only evidence is the settlement agreement. Social Security hearings are more intense and scary, but still not so bad. They are not adversarial proceedings, so there is no opposing lawyer & client trying to trip me up at every opportunity. I just have to convince the administrative law judge, an employee of the Social Security Administration, that my client is disabled.

Anyway, it's a post-holiday Saturday, and those are the best kind of all. That's what I'll say today, anyway.

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cherry

I made my first appearance ever "in front" of an Article 3* Judge today, this very day. For family reasons, my colleague was unexpectedly out of the office this morning, and, well, he had a hearing at 11:30 to terminate our client's grandparents' guardianship of her child. Attorney #23665 to the rescue! I appeared by telephone (hence the quotation marks around "in front") and sounded like the utter newbie I am, but I didn't screw it up and our client has regained custody of her child. (It would have been hard to screw it up--the other side agreed and did most of the talking.)

*An Article 3 judge is one provided for in Article 3 of the Constitution. Administrative law judges, such at those that adjudicate social security hearings, are not Article 3 judges. They are part of the executive branch, and besides, they have nowhere near the power and prestige, and they wear suits instead of robes (at least the one I've seen did).

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dogbreath

Hi there. I haven't been blogging much lately mainly for doggy reasons. For several days I could not figure out how to merely be in my living room--either my dog friend was barking piteously at me from the kitchen or eating all the furniture and electrical cords in sight and peeing on the wood floors. Thanks to SWT, problem solved. The right kind of chewy combined with the removal of a Petmate Pet Porter from the bedroom to the living room were a dream come true. Happy, contained pup=happy, relaxed me. Also, Lulu is sweet and funny, but also naughty and exhausting, especially for poor-me-never-had-a-dog-before. She came from a farm to the "city", and I, from a completely human-centered world to dogland. We're both of us a little dazed, I think.

To be fair, she hasn't peed on the floor in three days--and I take about 95% of the responsibility for those incidents. We have a rhythm going now, though. And she can sit and heel and lie down on command when she feels like it, which is pretty amazing for a wee three-month-old, or so I in my ignorance believe.

One last doggy reason why I haven't posted much is because all I've been doing is work, dog-walking, and dog-shopping. I don't want this to become luludotdotdot, though I am sure she will have her proper place of honor. Work has been overwhelming--actually being a lawyer, giving people legal advice--is a complicated and intimidating business. Mostly my method is guess-and-check, as it always has been. Tra-la for the scientific method. So anyhow, the upshot is I've been quite tired every day, too tired to think up clever bits for my reading public. I'll try to get back on that horse. Now that I can actually sit in some measure of peace in my living room, there may be hope yet.

I got called a "shyster" for the first time a few days ago. Not that I minded in that instance, it wasn't meanly intended, but it is weird suddenly to be a member of a group that literally anyone feels comfortable denigrating, and directly to my face to boot. A shyster is, according to the merriam-webster online dictionary, "a person who is professionally unscrupulous especially in the practice of law or politics: PETTIFOGGER". A pettifogger is a "lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable"; or "one given to quibbling over trifles." (same source.) Pretty harsh, especially considering I have barely had any time, as a newly minted lawyer, to be petty, underhanded, disreputable, unscrupulous, or quibbling. It's not all bad, though, I should say. I received a very kind "good for you!" from a random young woman I met in a coffee shop a few weeks ago, when I told her, rather embarrassedly, that I was an attorney. (I was embarrassed because I wasn't used to the title, not because such a thing is embarrassing.)

anyway, this might be boring and I'm tired (at 9:30). I'm out.
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