Ringo

My heart hurts today. You see, a few days ago our rock star kitty, Ringo, was hit by a car and killed. He was only three years old and still just filling in to his oversized paws. In many ways, he was just an ordinary cat - a grey and black striped tabby, but in every way he just exuded a coolness that belied ordinary catness. His walk was the sort of stalk you see in big, wild cats on nature shows, all lanky, protruding shoulder bones and long strides. He was a mighty hunter; field mice were fine enough, but he would also bring us baby bunnies and he apparently had a taste for squirrel (and routinely caught specimen as big as himself).

I often said that having him in our life would be excellent training in the event we ever find ourselves raising a teenage boy. He clearly craved our attention, running between our feet and greeting us in the driveway as soon as we came home, but would never deign to sit in our laps, and if we swooped down upon him and picked him up he would only just tolerate it. His schedule of choice had him roaming about at night and coming in in the morning to sleep off the previous evenings festivities. On occasion, we would hear rather frightening wailing from the neighbor's yard, but Ringo always came home mostly unscathed. His independence never failed to keep us guessing, but he always came home.

What threw him off was the move. Tara and I moved last week to a beautiful new home. It was -- is -- and exciting time, and we have walked around the last several weeks telling our pets about how much they would love all the new space and the acres of farmland that now surround us. Ringo, as you might expect, does not speak English though. And the move proved confusing for him. He showed no interest in going outside initially, and followed us around from room to room mewing pitifully -- not at all like the Ringo we knew. On Saturday night though he showed an interest in going outside. Tara and I had talked about not letting him out until he seemed more comfortable in the house, but when I saw him wanting to go outside I was relieved to see him acting normally. So, though I thought to myself that I didn't want him to go outside, when he ran out while I was putting out the dog, I didn't try and stop him. It must not have been more than a half hour later when our phone rang; our number was on his collar. I have never wanted a rewind button so badly in my life.

A General Update of Fun Things of Note

Outside it is snowing with those dense little snowflakes of the type that will add up to 8 to 10 inches by the end of the evening and I can't think of anything specific to write about, so here is an assortment of random things for you all to chew on.

Cool Blog
My friend Lizza sent
this link to her brother's blog about all things Mongolian. It's an interesting read, so take a look.

New Music
There was another fabulous find on itunes for us this week -- Maximo Park. Bands with a eighties-retro feel are all the rage these days, and Maximo Park is definitely in that camp. But they pull it off without sounding trite largely because their lyrics are just so darn infectious. Their hooks stick with you and even this staid 30 year old can happily bob along to Maximo Park's apt and often funny take on the yucky parts of being twenty-something; i.e. "Why did I have to meet you on the night I lost my head?" Tara says, "I like them and they are groovy." It is also of note that I found this band and snagged the album, and in our house, where Tara fancies herself the true music connoisseur between us, I consider that quite an accomplishment.

Houstonian Wins Gold
Cutie Texan, Chad Hedrick, won the United States' first gold medal last night. He grew up in my neck of the woods, and his parents own a roller skating rink down there. The media is doing that obnoxious thing whereby they keep asking him if he feels any pressure now to win fourteen more gold medals, and he just keeps flashing his incredibly toothy smile and saying in that adorable drawl, in not so many words -- bugger off Bob Costas; I'm here to skate. I like that young man, I really do.

What I learned in my first week as a public defender

Since mid-December, I have bounced around from New Haven to Washington, to Houston three separate times, to, finally, two weeks of training in Boston. Now I am finally back home and began what feels like the rest of my life when I went to the District Court and was assigned my first clients. After two days in court, I already have eleven clients and things are shaping up to be pretty fast and furious and very fun. Needless to say, I learned some very valuable lessons in my first week of defending my community's alleged petty criminals:

1) If you have yourself a drug problem, don't go to court with your sizeable stash and a hypo in your pocket and then wig out. That will get you arrested.

2) Being the daughter of the former police chief of a town will not necessarily make you smart enough to tell the cops no when they ask to search your purse which you know contains several bags of heroin. Which leads me to my next lesson;

3) my supervisor wisely told me yesterday that he learned only two things in law school. First, the answer when any cop asks you anything is no. And second, only commit one crime at a time. Had a few drinks and not sure whether to drive home? Check your pockets; if there's a bag of weed there or an expired driver's license, don't do it. If all your other ducks are in a row, well, the risk you are taking, at least legally, drops substantially and it's your call.

My New Favorite Band

Well, I don't know if I would go that far, but I stumbled on to the newest effort by a band called The Weepies last week, and I keep going back and back again to this cd. In this age of ipod shuffle (and yeah for Mom and Dad for getting me the new ipod for Christmas), where no matter how much you may like a song it might be just too much trouble to spin the little dial to find it to listen to it, that's saying a lot.

The Weepies aren't so much a band as a couple of folkies who have hooked up to cut an album. But Deb Talan and Steve Tannan meld together seamlessly, with simple lyrics and a sound that is a little haunting even though it never veers far from poppy and rarely hits a minor key. My favorite cut, Gotta Have You is a catchy, missing you song and given that I am stuck in D.C. apart from my dear Tara it's not hard to see why I might be attracted, but the song cheekily thumbs its nose at life's vices, boiling it all down to what's important - "No amount of coffee, no amount of cryin', no amount of whiskey, no amount of wine, no no, no, no, no. Nothing else will do, I gotta have you." In World Spins Madly On, Tannan shows off his stuff in his comment on the inexplicable way the sun always continues to come up after a love has slipped off into the ether. Also a stand out is Nobody Knows Me at All, a take on the anonymity and isolation that can permeate even the happiest soccer dad's life. It's short, plucky melody would be at home on the soundtrack of the show Weeds, where cynicism and sweetness mix to create an arresting scene of domestic bliss gone slighty askew.

There are other nuggets to find in the album, so check it out.