Mackenzie's Weblog

Friday Catblogging!

Today I bring you Part Two of the Kitten Extraviganza, the kittens that were born a week ago today. These shots are of the kittens only, without mom. In future weeks, I plan on bringing you more kitten photos, assuming MackenzieMom is interested.





Have a great weekend!

Fun with Law School

I'm in Family Law today, and we're talking about when religion can be used as a basis for custody when one of my esteemed classmates utters the phrase, "If I were to try to explain circumcision to an alien . . . ." That was funny enough, but he went on to clarify that it was'nt harmful. Apparently, it's no big deal because he doesn't remember when he was circumcised.

I never would have asked for that information, but I suppose it's too late now.

Reflective moments

Law school is a funny place. Often law students will hear that the experience teaches one to "think differently" or, barely less vague, "think like a lawyer." To a certain extent, that really means a certain way of putting information together to reach conclusions. For the non-lawyers out there, you have to figure out the rule of processing certain like situations, then apply the rule--derived from miscellaneous other situations--to a completely new fact pattern. It doesn't sound bad, but most people are not accustomed to that way of dealing with information.

My biggest problem is not that. In fact, my mind worked more or less that way even before I began law school, so it hasn't been a wrenching experience for me, as it is for a lot of people. My biggest weakness is far different, and it is generally only revealed in practical classes. My problem is that I tend to fill in the gaps with my own assumptions. If someone gives me an outline of a fact pattern, I have a tendency to fill in the details with what I assume to be reasonable based on my own experiences. Many times I'm not even aware I'm doing this.

Needless to say, this creates problems, mainly because if my opponent notices that I sort of left the details out, she can fill those in with her own theory. I'm good at the broad concepts, but not the details. It's a matter of being precise. Law school has helped quite a bit, and I am much better at this than I ever have been. But it's still not where I'd like to be.

I suppose that's a change I'd like to see in legal education, and I don't see it stressed enough. It comes out more in the 'practical' classes. I think it will help that the new ABA standards require that students (starting with the class of 2008) have minimum practical hours. Still, it's something I need to work on. I just feel glad to recognize it because I know I'm not the only person who has this problem, and only those of us who realize we're doing it can really address it.

Damn Spring Weather

Today was a beautiful day. The only reason this sucks is because yesterday was awful, and I really wanted yesterday to be nice. That's one of the nasty parts of having this spring weather, it is very unpredictable. Whereas yesterday I could have gone for a run outside and changed my oil, today I was pretty much stuck inside the law school all day.

I hope next weekend is nice.

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air

I started running somewhat less than a year ago.  I pretty much ran outside to start with, though I've been running indoors over the winter.  I've heard that running shoes should be replaced at around 600 miles, and I'm pretty sure the shoes I got last year have put in significantly more than that.  I was starting to get more blisters and have more joint pain, so I knew I had to do something.  Yesterday, Saturday, I got some new shoes for running.

I am reborn.

These shoes are so soft, so comfortable, and so cushioned that there is really no comparison.  Today I ran for an hour and 20 minutes, and it felt great.  If not for the fact that I had a ton to do today (like every day), I could have gone longer.  To top it off, I seem to have no adverse effects on my feet, which is absolutely exquisite.

I'm looking forward to wearing these out, too.

Friday Catblogging!

I am delighted to report that I am finished with cite-checking. This means my abhorrent lack of posting can get back to its regular level, not its "no posting on steroids" level it has been at the last week.

And that's not the only reason to celebrate. This morning I received an email report from MackenzieMom that one of her cats--Beegee, assuming my spelling is correct--divested herself of a few kittens. I now present photographic proof:

There appear to be around a half-dozen or so, but MackenzieMom can correct me in the comments if I'm wrong.

Have a great weekend!

Back from Break

It's kind of good to be back in the routine.  Granted, I enjoyed being able to get up later in the morning, drink tea, read some news and blogs, then get to work, but there is something to be said for being back in the routine.  I didn't hit the gym at all while on break, despite its greater availability.  I did go for a relatively short run tonight, which was much overdue.  And I need new shoes; mine are trying to kill me.

Going back to the gym also gives me a chance to listen to my podcasts.  I have been particularly interested in listening to arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court from Oyez.org.  They intrigue me for historical value and for the learning experience.  I'll be doing that, albeit for a state court, this summer, and I enjoy listening to the exchanges in the recordings. I'm on my way to recognizing the Justices by voice. O'Connor is pretty easy. Others are harder, but I'm sure I'll get it sooner or later.

I do have one request for counsel arguing before the Court.  Please do not thump the podium. It interferes with the recording.

Fickle Felines

Generally, I am not home very often--as is well known by both my readers.  When I do get home, and then get up in the morning to go back to the law school, my cats pretty much mug me for my attention.

Since I've more or less been home all day for about half a week now, that has pretty much gone away.  They now spend the majority of the day in the bedroom sleeping in one massive furry bundle.

It makes me feel a little better about leaving them here all day.

Friday Catblogging!

Here are some shots my friend took with my camera when she came over to share in my bountiful gumbo:

Sebastian and Jupiter at floor level:

Sebastian curious about my friend's knitting:

I will have more from this evening (I have to dribble the photos slowly, you know) next week.

Have a great weekend!

Know Your Word Processor

I'm in the process of editing a Word document that someone else created.  It's a lot of work, primarily because the author neglected to use any of the features in Word that make formatting such a document a breeze.  Namely, this has to do with using formatting styles.  For those who are unaware, you basically set a bundle of text characteristics (such as font, the indent, paragraph spacing, etc.) and then designate your text according to those characteristics.  For example, the "Normal" style in the document I'm working on is 12pt Times New Roman with a .25" first-line indent and a 12pt paragraph space after each paragraph.  I have several other styles I'm using, too.

Why do this?  It's quite simple.  What if I decide that the document is too long, and I don't want a line between paragraphs?  Well, if it is formatted sloppily, there is probably a full line break between each paragraph, which means if I want to condense the paragraphs I would have to go through the entire document and delete each one of the lines between the paragraps.  Using styles, though, I just go into the "Normal" style, change the "space after paragraps" to 0, and it's done throughout the entire document.

I've noticed that a lot of people today still think of word processing as a sort of glorified typewriter.  That's like thinking of people as glorified stick figures.  So many people still use tabs for text positioning!  This seems to work at first, but as soon as you want to change anything document-wide, it just ends up being a house of cards that falls apart.

Here's my tip for the day: get to know your word processor.  Take some time to learn some of the features and tricks.  Learn about the dimensions that you can write in.  I promise you, you'll be happier and more productive for it.

On Relaxing and Cat Vomit

It has been a lovely little break so far, but it's back to work tomorrow.  Cleaning my house has been the most taxing thing, and even that has been rather nice as I cleaned out my computer room to such a degree that I would allow other humans to see the inside.  Today, for example, I got up at 7 (sleeping in for me) and drank tea while catching up on some of the 50,000 blogs I lamely attempt to read.  I'll be leaving for a bit to pick up the intrepid travellers from the airport, with a lunch stop in Cheyenne.

Last night I had a friend over for dinner and a movie.  I made gumbo.  Sorry to all my friends out of town, but I promise I'll do it again.  It was pretty fun.

One unsettling thing, though.  You know when you are in the middle of sleeping and you kinda-sorta wake up a little to the sound of a cat *HWORK*ing?  Then you know how--after a brief panicy flailing to make sure said feline is not on the bed--your lower brain decides to just deal with it in the morning?  Then you know how sometimes you wake up thinking that the first thing to do on this bright sunny day is to track down the cat vomit and eliminate it?  Then you look all over the house and realize there appears to be no cat vomit anywhere?

Yeah, me neither.

Geeking Out

When I was first accepted to law school, I told people that I was about to become a professional writer.  It's been said many times that words are the lawyers tools, and I have really seen that.  In the legal world, poor writing, misspelling, and lack of clarity all negatively affect one's reputation.  Starting with this second year, the writing I have had to do is considerably more demanding.  This is true both in terms of academic writing, such as my case note, and my writing for work, such as at the City or the Attorney General's office.

I also feel like I didn't learn as much as I wanted about writing briefs in Appellate Advocacy in my first year.  Because my summer job will consist almost entirely of writing briefs, I thought I had better brush up.  I remembered that I had seen a book on brief-writing somewhere, and a little foray into Amazon.com turned it up.  While I was at it, I decided to order a couple other books on legal writing.

All told, I ended up with three books.  The first is The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts, the second is The Elements of Legal Style, and the third is The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.  All three were written by Bryan Garner, the editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary, and a leading authority on legal writing.  I've read the first two books from cover to cover (and read/skimmed the third), and they are really great.  There are many tips and guidelines for any legal writer.  I highly recommend all of them.  I'm really getting excited about my summer job and editing for law review.  I'm looking forward to teaching a few writers what I've learned, both from experience and these great resources.

Don't hate me because I change my plans

I'm postponing my "I am a big fat geek" post for a day or so because yesterday I forcibly became aware of my own mortality.  There's no harm done for two reasons.  First, anyone who knows me will say to themselves, "Um, yeah.  You're the guy who likes reading for classes.  I don't need more evidence of your geekitude."  The second is that the geek post will have such power that it will transcend time and thus give today a full dose of geek.

But enough about that, let's talk about death.

When I go to New Orleans for winter break each year, Travis is the one who drives me to Denver so I can get the hell out of this diety-forsaken wasteland for a couple weeks.  I appreciate the favor.  When he asked me if I would drive him and a couple friends to the airport yesterday (they're in Vegas.  Bastards.),¹ then pick them up on Wednesday, I thought, "sure, I'll just return the favor."

In Wyoming, though, spring driving can be kind of sketchy.  This is a dry area, so we don't get much snow in the winter, but spring is a different matter.  We have this quaint little tradition of getting utterly dumped on during spring break.  One year we got about three feet in one day.  I'm not exaggerating.

It has been snowing lightly for the last few days, but nothing too bad.  Yesterday, I woke up at 5:30 to a light dusting on the ground with a little coming from the sky.  "Not bad," I said to myself.  "This should be fine."  I pick everyone up about seven, and by not-long-after-that, we're on I-80.²  The road looks fine at first, like it's not really icy at all.  The car was doing this odd swaying thing, though, so I applied a little break  as a test.  We could hear the "skshshsh" of the tires sliding.  Not good.

So for the first part of the Cheyenne leg, the road was apparently well-protected by a coating of ice.  Then, it switched to packed snow, which, of course, is not any better.  most of that leg of the trip we ended up going between 35 and 45 miles per hour.  Every once and a while, on the upper end of the scale, I could tell my car was getting a little suicidal and had to back it down a bit.  We saw about three wrecks, I think, between that section and the part from Cheyenne to Fort Collins, where conditions were similar.

This isn't the death part.  It wouldn't have been so bad by itself.  I had purposefully given us an extra hour, anticipating that we might have to slow down.  What really did it was the crazy truck drivers.

To start with, they either didn't slow down at all, or they did so in such a cursory fashion that it made no difference.  The road was completely icy, and they are tearing past me, incidentally blocking my visibility significantly by kicking up all that snow.  Even that wouldn't have been so bad if they had kept their distance, but they didn't.  About 75% of the trucks that passed me did so within two feet of my vehicle.  A few were within a foot.  At one point a truck did this while I was pulling over because an ambulance was coming from behind (from a really nasty crash).  I think the truck nearly ran the ambulance off the road.  It was Xtreme Driving.

Anyway, We made it to the airport within 3 hours, which was well within my planned time.  On the way back, the roads were completely clear, and mostly dry.  I had lunch in Cheyenne with a friend I hadn't seen in quite a while.  I can only conclude that by leaving at 7 a.m., we simply beat the snowplows to the road.  I do the whole thing again on Wednesday, but I don't believe the weather will be nearly as bad as yesterday.  I hope.

<ol type=1>
<li>1.  They're in Vegas.  Bastards.
<li>2.  For those of you not familiar with the area, the "Interstate Method" of getting to Denver is to take I-80 to Cheyenne, then I-25 to Denver.  Immediately out of Laramie on this route is a pass through some mountains that form the Laramie Valley.  You climb at a pretty steep angle, then gently descend the next 35 miles or so to Cheyenne.  Gently, that is, if you don't have the steering wheel in some kind of death grip.
</ol>

Friday Catblogging!

This week, we are back to my cats. Jupiter, helping me study: Sebastian, being himself: Tomorrow: one of the many ways I am a big, fat geek. Have a great weekend, and for those to whom this applies, a great Spring Break!

Near An End

Tonight my cite-checking partner and I finished the final cite-checks for my case note.  I have a few more polishing changes to make, but it is pretty much done.  I'll be giving it over this week; Friday at the latest.

It's kind of weird.  I've been working on it, sort of, for the better part of year.  For true symmetry, consider the fact that tomorrow is the big "you should write for Law Review" meeting.  Our job is basically to convince 1 and 2Ls that they should write notes and comments, respectively.  It appears it has been somewhere around a year, then, that I first went to a similar meeting.  Granted, my case hadn't come out yet, and I didn't do as much over the summer as I should have, but it still has been a long time.

I'm actually looking forward to the law review stuff.  I think we can have a bunch of great student-written materials to publish, and I really look forward to helping to make that possible.  I've heard from a number of my classmates who are interested in writing comments, and, while I'm not a comment editor, I'm happy that they are interested and proud of my class for being ambitious enough to have that many people who want to do it.  I really hope they all follow through, because I think they'd be good at it.

In other news, spring break is next week.  This will give me a chance to catch up on my outlines and clean my house like crazy.  It's nice to have some time to catch up.  Of course, I also have to work on some job applications so that I can perhaps have a job ready when I graduate.  It really never ends.

Friday Catblogging!

This week, we have a special treat. Half my readership (the Dancer) has requested acrobatic photos. I don't have any of my own, but I found the following photos somewhere on the net some time ago. If you are the owner and don't like my using them, let me know and I'll replace them.

Have a great weekend!

Solidarity:

Here's a little IM exchange from yesterday. Travis and I have all the same classes:

Travis: Crap, I have Evidence in 15 minutes!
Mackenzie: Ha! Sucks to be you! Oh, wait . . .

End of my streak

Well, as of today, my little streak of having to make choices is over . . . for now. That's right, I have actually found, been offered, and accepted summer employment. I will be a legal intern in the Criminal Division at the Wyoming Attorney General's office, exactly the job I wanted. It doesn't pay all that much, but the experience will be phenomenal. The AG's office handles all the appeals in Wyoming, so I will be taking a trial record and handling the appeal. This means briefing and arguing before the Wyoming Supreme Court. That is fabulous experience.

It's very exciting to think that I'll actually be practicing law in two and a half months.

Incidentally, as a little plug for my law school, how many people out there are almost guaranteed to argue a case before a state supreme court if they want to before they graduate? Damn few. I haven't heard of any other places that have it so commonly. One of the nice things about this school is that the court and the school have such a great relationship that should any student have that goal going in, there's really no reason the person wouldn't be able to do it, whether it be clinic work or by getting a sweet summer job like myself.

Incidentally, public congrats to Travis, who will be the next Student Director of the Domestic Violence Legal Assistance Clinic.