Three long months before Nirvana

Three months before the beginning of the UGA football season. I am like a child waiting for Christmas. GO DAWGS! SIC’ EM! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!

Randomness

I had scored some Braves tickets last night. Despite posting on SG, Twitter, and other places both on the interwebs and in real life, I could not find a single person that was willing to go with me. God, this sucks. I do not go to sporting events alone, unless it is a UGA football game. Anyhow, I was not going to let these tickets go to waste. I was able to find someone willing to purchase the tickets. Now, since I did not pay anything for the tickets, I did not feel right in gouging someone that was willing to go and help me out. So, I skipped out of work and went to Atlanta to meet my willing buyer.

I had brought to work a change of clothes for the game, to wit: a pair of jeans, a pair of steel tip boots, and a black linen shirt. On my way out to my car, I saw the chief judge walking back to the courthouse. This judge does not mind if I wear casual clothes to the office, so long as I don’t go to court in them. However, I don’t like the Judges that I practice in front of see me in casual clothes. They are from the old school that lawyers must maintain the dignity of the profession. Plus, I did not have want to answer questions of why I was leaving early from the office, why did I have a change of clothes with me, and why I was taking them to my car? So, I started to walk in a manner that could avoid the chief judge seeing me. As soon as I did so, I hit the panic button on my key chain by accident. The chief judge looked at me, shook his head, and walked away. I wanted to crawl underneath a rock.

I love to drive, but with gas prices near $4 a gallon, I don’t get to do it for fun much anymore. I drive primarily to work and back home. So, I enjoyed the drive to Atlanta, and listening to Braves putting a whuppin’ on the Schmuts (aka the Mets). As I pulled into Little 5 Points, I enjoyed being in an urban environment. Now, mind you, I loved my time out in the rural part of Georgia, and I am proud of my country roots. Yet, there is something to be said about living in Atlanta.

While I waited to meet up with the buyer of the tickets, a young lady walked up with a large trash bag full of clothes. She appeared to be a college student or someone that lived in the area that was about to move. She asked me to watch her belongings. I said yes. She pointed to her car, which was only a short distance away, and said that she would bring it down here because she could not carry the bag up the hill. So, I picked up her bag and carried it to her car. It felt good being a good southern boy helping a lady out with her personal belongings. Shortly thereafter, I met with the buyer and received a small payment for the tickets (to talk about the amount of the payment would be just tacky, especially considering I did not pay a dime for them). Afterwards, I was on my home, I decided to take a picture or two with my cell phone camera. Check them out.

The Law School Blues

I am glad that the people in law school have a wonderful sense of humor.

Odds and Ends

NPR contacted yours truly to be a part of an online program called “News and Notes.” However, I was unable to participate due to my court schedule. Damn it. It would have been fun. Anyhow, here is the link to the program. The only fault that I have with the program is that two participants are in the “true believer” vein. A differing perspective would have been interesting and would have given the program more levity.

Drug cases make up a good one-third to one-half of the cases that come across my desk. While most clients want “help,” they rarely do anything to help themselves. There are a few that want to be clean and sober. Those clients are the ones where it is easier to help. Yet, it breaks your heart when you see them relapse. Here is a story to illustrate my point. I had a client who was facing a revocation of her probation back in 2007. She was facing three years in prison or go to a prison rehab facility that has a nine month wait. She did not want to go to the prison rehab facility, but to a private non-profit program. She had contacted the program, filled out the paperwork, and got accepted into the program. She did all of this before I was even appointed to represent her. The Judge was resistant at first, but with some time and effort, I convinced the Judge to let her go to the program that she had chosen. She was doing so good. She had moved from the in-patient portion to the work program. In fact, she got a job answering phones at a law office. Earlier this week, I received a frantic phone call from her. She had relapsed twice and was kicked out of the program. At this point, it would have been easy to chastise her for making a terrible choice or to tell her that she was going to die because of her addiction or to make some kind of judgmental statement to her. However, I felt  pity for her because she is addicted to this poison, and sadness that she was possibly going to be separated from her children again. She was begging me to let her stay out long enough to spend time with her children before she turned herself in. My heart sunk in my chest as I told her that she had to turn herself in. I felt a little part of my humanity slip away into nothingness. So, I told her that I understood if she spent some time with her children before turning herself in, but I could not condone it as her attorney.

My client that was charged with murder hired a private counsel, and so did my armed robbery client. Each of the private counsels that have taken over these cases have praised me on the work that I have done. Yet, I am still pissed off that these clients think that I have done nothing on their cases. Plus, I want to progress in my development of as an attorney, and I cannot do that when my high profile cases go and hire private counsel.

For the love of UGA Football

With the all of the hype with UGA football this year and the “contribution” that UGA Alumni have to give to get priority for tickets, somebody might have to resort to the foregoing just to get upper level tickets this year.