Read My Lips - the blog

Another long trail ends with sore feet

Yep, Court was a marathon. I had one client that was not pleased in the least with the punishment recommendation on her case, which I too believed was a bit harsh. I tag teamed with another attorney who is representin' her against CPS in a custody matter against the DA. For his part, the DA did spend considerable time listenin' to the both of us and lookin' through the file at the evidence. He stood by his recommendation, however, and I and the other attorney, as well as one of her jail friends, advised the client that she could do better by her kids through takin' the deal offered (which required several months of inpatient drug treatment prior to release on probation) than by continually being brought back to court month after month with no resolution pendin' jury trial. This one case wore me out. I had a couple of others, but one will be comin' back month after month until we can actually get it to the top of the list of those cases that will be going to trial. Another we will get in front of a jury next week on the limited issue of whether the person is competent to stand trial. The gem of this afternoon's adventure was my appointment to another case by the court during the docket call. As it turned out, this was the easy case as the defendant was eager to take the offered deal. Of course, the necessary paperwork takes forever. I was through with court by a little after 4:00 and spent the next half hour or so copyin' documents at the clerk's office and discussin' expeditin' several of my client's cases with various members of the DA's office.

As I was in the neighborin' town, one with several types of places to eat that do not exist in my small burg, I decided to stop and have some Lo Mein and egg rolls for dinner. I then drove home, went by the office and returned some calls, put a note on the door tellin' everyone I would be back in court at 9:00 am tomorrow and would hopefully be back in the office after lunch, stopped by my favorite store and refilled my Dr. Pepper cup and came home. I am tired and sore and yet I feel compelled to do somethin' I have not done in awhile. Remember when I changed my blogroll to list in updated format? Well there are several blogs at the very bottom of that roll that I seldom seem to visit anymore. Tonight I have visited each and every one of them, and here is what I found:

• I wanted to say somethin' really snarky about this thing I found on lovely Annika's site, but I am too appalled at the episode to find anything humorous to say.
• My favorite Bush-basher Oldcatman has penned a Halloween poem modeled on The Night Before Christmas starring the aforementioned President Bush. [scroll to the Oct. 30th entry]
• Average White Guy, recently widowed, discovers, after a discussion with the counselor when taking his daughter for grief counselin', that he might also have a need for such. [scroll to Oct. 29th entry]
• anonymous gurl experiences no angst at turning 40, instead finds herself strangely comfortable with her life and accomplishments. [you might have to search the archives for the post entitled THERE IS NO ANGST dated Oct. 25, 2003 should it drop from the index page when you try to visit]
• If I had not ventured on this little quest along the bottom of my blogroll I would have missed this nice description of Halloween as practiced in the 21st Century penned by my good friend DavidMC
• Azygos shares a story of someone comin' to the end of their life with such compassion, you hope he holds your hand when the time comes.
• Signal+Noise has moved from blog*spot and reports on a new sweetner that tastes like sugar and is sugar but without the problems of sugar.
• It seems that what I had blogrolled as Armchair Analyst is now The Chicago Report and is reportin' that business in America is good.
• My2cents has changed its name to Dangerously Delusional and dabiotch [didn't she used to be Wandalicious?] is rantin' 'cause the Red Cross is thinkin' of pullin' out of Iraq.
• Although she admittedly blogs very seldom, Linda [Biting-Nails] has recently penned a tale of someone who really should learn to keep his mouth shut.
• Ian Hamet [Banana Oil] continues to post regularly and to talk about what you can see in movies and TV. I especially liked his take on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
• Public Defender Dude states that cops lie in trials. Now who would have ever thunk that?
• Ross [Rocket Penguin] gives an example of how the Army has really softened since my day when enforcement usually meant being taken behind some building wrapped in a blanket and gettin' whacked a few times with a bunk adapter. Of course, some of those old brown boot guys were always hangin' around tellin' us how much rougher the Army was in the old days during my early days too. ;) and
• The newest member of my blogroll is Gennie [Dizzy Girl] whose latest post on the power of linky-love or whorin' as she called it was what initially compelled me to troll the bottom of the blogroll.

There was an additional one or two blogs that I visited in the quest that seemed to have not been updated much during the last month, so I passed on mentioning them in this listing.