I fancy myself to be a novice gardener

To catch you up on work, Thursday I received my official ADA badge. It's a silver star with my name, my title, and the office, that will soon be in a black leather wallet. (SWEET!) Friday I did my first pleas in court. For non-lawyers, that means three of the defendants to whom I made plea offers the week before accepted, so the three pled guilty to a total of nine counts of burglary (of a building, which is a state jail felony, and of a habitation, which is a second degree felony). So, three just-barely-adults are now on probation as a direct result of my work. (again, SWEET!) Also, I found out today that one of them may have already done something that violates his probation, so we may end up revoking his delinquent butt. Remains to be seen.

I spent the weekend in Austin, where I went to a Killing Industry show at Trophy's with Kyle and Erin on Friday night. Saturday we played softball, kickball, horseshoes, and swam for Sam's birthday party. Good times, except I realized how super out of shape I am. Sunday I drove back to Lamesa after watching Role Models, which I would encourage everyone to see. I'd give it 3, maybe 4 stars. The drive between Lamesa and Austin is about 6 hours, which isn't terrible, but gets a little scary after dark near Austin, because the road's so hilly and curvy. For anyone who may be visiting me, I'd suggest getting gas in Big Spring or San Angelo because it's cheaper in those cities than other places along the drive.

Today I spent a solid three hours weeding; one hour in the backyard and two in the front. Other than the fact that there's a few more spots of just dirt, you can hardly tell I was even out there. It's rather discouraging. However, I have ambitious plans for my yard, so I'm going to keep plugging away at it. (My ambitious plan is primarily to be able to walk barefoot in my yard and have more grass than weeds...yes, it's really that bad.) Anyways, hopefully I'll have a mowable yard before I acquire a dog, because I could lose a small dog in my backyard jungle right now.

That's all I can think of that's new in my life...have a good week, good luck on the bar, and make plans to visit me! :)

Bitchy McCantbepleased

Today we had two pleas and a parole revocation hearing. This should have taken no more than 90 minutes total, but our judge takes 20+ minutes per plea, and the hearing lasted 2.5 hours. Really. The length of the hearing was made worse by the fact that we didn't start until 4:00 pm because up to that point there was a hearing trying to divide up someone's farm assets (cattle, land, John Deeres, etc) among three squabbling siblings. I wanted to punch them in the face and tell them to suck it up, they're getting free stuff. But back to criminal law...the defendant in the hearing has an inability to accept responsibility for anything and seems to like behaving like a 13 year old girl. (she's about 45) So, she was simultaneously the most annoying and the most hilarious defendant I've ever seen. She was on probation beginning in 2004 for food stamp fraud, then got a federal charge in 2006, but they still gave her another chance. Bitch has had about five chances, and she still doesn't seem to understand that HER BEHAVIOR is what's getting her in trouble. Another amazing characteristic: she can't seem to answer a question. She'd get something about why she quit her job, and start talking about fake medical issues. The best part is, that in about 13 years when she gets released from state and federal prison, if she goes back to her prior home she'll live about three blocks from me. Awesome.

In other news, I watered my yard last night and then it rained today. I learned that if it's raining or has rained heavily, I have to take a different route home to avoid drowning my car. Not a big deal, but good to know. Also, when I FINALLY left work at 7:30, i decided to check out Los Ybanez. This is the half section about a mile southeast of Lamesa that was incorporated as a town specifically so they can sell booze. Unfortunately, it's a drive thru (kind of cool) that only takes cash (not cool.) So Katie won't be making herself a margarita tonight, despite talk of it during the looooong hearing today. C'est la vie. Overall, life is good. I still like the job, the house is growing on me (although the idea of home ownership still scares me), and I have thus far had a regular stream of visitors, who make life happier. Keep the visit's coming, y'all!

Also, thanks to Emily H. for the title of this one, from days long ago at TU. :)

A few thoughts while the internet's working

I'm still stealing internet, so I should take advantage since it wasn't really working when I was trying to post pictures earlier.

Thoughts:
Come to Lamesa because there's a drive in movie theater. Super fun in itself, but add tasty cheap food, including something called a chihuahua which is my new favorite 4000 calorie food, and you have a great evening. Assuming you have a citronella candle in the car to drive off some of the bugs, and it doesn't start raining. Harry Potter on a BIG screen is fun, but the book is still (of course) much better.

My dad, Lisa, and Tony are awesome for visiting me this weekend. Woo for having shelves and towel rods installed and appliances on the way. I never really thought about how much money goes into a house that's just been redone until moving in here. It's amazing how many things this house doesn't have, considering it was just redone. Like towel racks, toilet paper holders, curtain rods, all the things you never think about but when you go to buy them all at once, (if you're me) you can't bring yourself to do it because in combination they're EXPENSIVE. Boo hiss. Oh well, at least the house is looking more lived in now.

Last but not least, I highly recommend Hoosiers, The French Connection, The Firm, and Mississippi Burning. All Gene Hackman movies, all good. I've watched them all in the past week. Not surprisingly, I watch a lot of movies here.

Have a good week, and for those of you taking the bar, keep studying but don't forget to sleep and eat and not be a hermit. At this point, there's only so much you can learn before the bar. You'll be fine.

The house

The living room is just about the perfect size for the furniture I had. (Thank goodness!)

The bar is pretty sweet. There will be two or three bar stools on either side (kitchen and living room) once I decide which ones I want.

The kitchen is so much nicer than either apartment, and in some ways is better than my parents's kitchen, even. It'll be even nicer when the gaps in the counter have appliances in them.

I don't think you can really tell in this picture, but my bathroom has a palm tree theme.

Somehow, amazingly, Bob the tomato plant survives everything. I don't know why, but Bob just won't die. He's a mutant.

My house is still a work in progress, no question, but it is progressing. I will have a normal size refrigerator and a stove/oven delivered July 29, while most of my law school friends are answering MBE questions. (Rememer the mantra: you will be fine.) I hope you enjoyed the pictures, but as always, please excuse the mess. :)

First paycheck

Since the last time I updated, I've been to the Odonnell rodeo; sent out 7 or 8 plea offers to defendants; co-interviewed 7 people, two of them twice, who are either defendants or witnesses; and received my first paycheck. Whew.

The Odonnell rodeo was fun in that it's much smaller than any rodeo I'd attended before so I was closer to the barrel races and whatnot, but it's really not much fun watching by myself. Also, the "witty banter" between the announcer and the rodeo clown was heavy on puns, wife jokes, and borderline racist humor.

Sending out plea offers and signing paperwork is exciting for about a day. I'm glad I actually get to do things that matter, but the coolest thing based on my work so far is the judge refusing someone a hearing based on my research into his eligibility for an exemption from registering as a sex offender. (Incidentally, I don't think he should have to register because I don't really think he's a sex offender in the high recidivism sense, but he wasn't eligible to be exempt the way the law is written.)

Yesterday was payday (yay!) and we spent most of the day interviewing people in Seminole. One of the interviews, with a girl who was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time and was caught with drugs in her car, got a lecture better than any I heard working in juvenile court. Hopefully it'll take and she'll find some less felonious friends. (If that's not a word, it is now.) Also, not that this is a surprise to me, but I have a hard time with sexual assault cases. Especially when the victim is a small child. Nothing makes me angrier and closer to being ok with the death penalty than someone who hurts a kid.

On a lighter note, I'm going to have three visitors this weekend, and I may actually start accumulating appliances now that I have income. Up to this point I've been living in a dorm fridge and microwave environment, but soon I might even be able to bake and do laundry in my own home. What a concept.

Final thought: I have three tickets to the Lamesa rodeo, good on any day July 30 - August 1. Hint, hint.

I'm a real lawyer now

So in the past two days, I've actually been assigned cases and handed things to the judge to sign during pretrial proceedings. Therefore, I guess I'm a real prosecutor. Crazy. Now I just need to make some friends here in Lamesa and my life will be pretty good. In the meantime, I have my books and movies, the internet, and my ipod. I might be lost without technology. I hope barbri wrapped up well for everyone and life is bebopping along as it should.

In other news, I may be getting a puppy in a few months. I was leaning more toward getting an adult dog from an animal shelter, but if I can get a dog whose parentage is known, that makes me feel better about getting a puppy than I would otherwise. TBD.

The house is officially mine and my mom (and dad's, thanks to Texas' community property laws.) I bet he never thought my moving to Lamesa would result in his having an undivided 1/4 interest in a house. The electric and water are in my name as of today, too. This means visitors can come whenever and see me and the house! PLEASE!

I think that's it. Have a good weekend!

The first three days

Day 1: In the office. My day consisted of talking to my boss and the other people in the office and reading cases from the previous week's Dawson County grand jury. Most of the cases were a group of kids just barely adults for criminal purposes who decided to steal shit from houses for no apparent reason. Awesome. This is why I'd have a hard time defending people. I have no patience for stupid.

Day 2: Docket in Garza County. Docket in each county occurs, I think, only once or twice a month. For the felony docket for this county, we were finished by noon. To give some perspective for non-criminal law people, it took a daily docket to do that in Harris County. Nothing too exciting in court, but we did go to a tasty restaurant for lunch. I am becoming a fan of small towns because they have tasty, reasonably priced hole in the wall restaurants. :)

Day 3: Docket in Dawson County. Dawson and Gaines have the biggest dockets among the four counties in the 106th. We actually had to come back in the afternoon to finish up a few people's cases. The last was the best of the day. The defendant was originally convicted in about 2004. She's since screwed up several more times and been kicked out of various TDCJ programs. Her diatribe about how none of it is her fault was hilarious. She just kept going and going for somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. Whenever the judge tried to focus her talking to what the judge was actually asking about, the defendant didn't let it stop her. The whining continued. And continued. Among other things, she talked about how in prison she'd gotten "a drug education, and a lesbian education." Can't say I knew they offered those classes in TDCJ.

In other news, I was sworn in by the judge today. She invited members of the Lamesa bar, so I met several attorneys who practice no criminal law. The thing I found most interesting is that, aside from the judge, I'm apparently the only female attorney in Lamesa. Crazy. But I'm a real attorney now, pending receipt by the bar of my prorated attorney tax. I owed them just under $100 because there was a month or so gap between when I was eligible to join the state bar and when I got my job, which (as a government attorney) made me exempt from the tax. I think that mostly sums up the past few days. Here's hoping tomorrow's docket in Gaines is just as much fun.

Random fact of the day: the 106th judicial district is divided between two appellate courts. Lynn and Garza Counties go to Amarillo and Dawson and Gaines go to Eastland. I find this entertaining because it means the same judge's cases may be appealled to two different courts. Oh, Texas.

Pictures

Look, windmills! If I'd been faster turning on my camera, I would have had a picture of windmills in the background and a single oil derrick near the freeway. Ah, Texas.

This is the view all the way to Lamesa. The side of the truck had a picture of Sacajawea. I wanted to punch her in the face. Why yes, I am all about the misplaced frustration leading to a desire to punch metal trucks.

I was going to post house pictures, but I think I'll not post anything that specific. If you want to see pictures of the house, let me know and I'll email a few.

Avoiding unpacking

Current status: I'm avoiding unpacking and borrowing someone else's wireless internet. I'm on my fourth movie of the day (Blazing Saddles, Snakes on a Plane, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and now You Only Live Twice).

Update on my life: Everything was moved into the house in about half an hour because the contractor, Chris, had several people come over to help. The house is beautiful, but way too big and lacking appliances. Right now I have a dorm fridge and a microwave. No washer/dryer, stove, oven, refrigerator, and no place to install a dishwasher. (bitch moan, bitch moan. my blog.) On the upside, my living room is set up and all my movies and board games are unpacked. My bathroom is mostly decorated. My bedroom and the living room have curtains, installed by me. (go me.) The rest of the house is rather less settled. However, I'm definitely open for business as far as wanting people to visit me. I'm lonely. I start work on Monday and we're closing on the house sometime this week. Maybe the same day I start work or maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. I hate this delay delay delay shit.

Things I've learned since arriving: I get splinters when I walk barefoot in the backyard. The Lamesa Wal-Mart closes at 10 pm. Lubbock has a decent mall, with a Rudy's and Freebirds nearby. Ikea dressers should not be moved by one person, because they get somewhat broken. Latin hip-hop singers exist, and one is the brother of the contractor who sold us the house. Jalapeno's is better Mexican food than Savannah's. The Lamesa Chinese buffet is overrated. Medium Pizza Hut pizza boxes fit in my dorm fridge. I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of right now.

Peace out.

Preliminary thoughts

It's 6:30 in the morning and I've been up for an hour already because I woke up and can't get back to sleep. That will make moving in today just awesome. The drive here was ok except there's no cruise control in the Uhaul and mom insisted on going in front, so I couldn't use cruise control either. At least I was very safe and texted most of the time, and even took a few pictures. (They will be posted later, once I unpack the cords for my camera.) I thought the juxtaposition of oil rigs in the foreground and windmills in the background was pretty appropriate for Texas right now...we need to get our energy shit sorted out, but that's a diatribe for another day. In the meantime, here's hoping the move in goes as smoothly as my mom seems to think it will.