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.