blind insight

Excuse me for not quite understanding the appeal.

Site-tracking programs are fun, an added layer of procrastinatory opportunities on the already-distracting pursuit of blogging. I enjoy seeing who reads me regularly, trying to guess which of my friends lives at "165.210.55," and what type of googling brings people over here. It's also interesting to note how dramatically my daily traffic increases when someone like Scheherazade plugs me on a widely read site.

Sometimes, the searches that lead people to me are funny, bizarre, sad, intriguing, or baffling. I'd give you examples, but I expect that would only increase such traffic to these parts. Today, though, I got a hit that was sufficiently disturbing to prompt this post.

To the person who found my blog by googling for blind+girl+bikini: I'm sorry, but that's just sick.

Thoughts while responding to a crappy brief.

I am finishing a reply to a truly bad brief. I won't tell you a thing about the case, since for all I know the opponent or someone else in the same office reads this, but the person who wrote this brief should be embarrassed to have submitted it. In addition to a host of typos, grammatical errors, and formatting glitches, it contains a serious misstatement of the law and numerous significant factual mistakes.

Responding to this type of garbage is tougher than you might think. Particularly in habeas cases, where the government lawyers need not do a particularly good job to win most of their cases most of the time, I can't assume that the court will give more credence to my arguments just because they're better written or because I've given a more accurate account of the record. Plus, because I'm a self-righteous snot, I have to restrain myself from calling the opposing lawyer a total bleeding moron (even though I would do so with schmancier words). So I've backspaced my way out of the unnecessary namecalling and simply pointed out the mistakes, allowing the errors themselves to speak to the errer's intelligence. I've also tried to refocus the court on my (correct) facts and arguments without rewriting the whole damn opening brief.

A wee lesson to all of you young (and not-so) lawyers and lawyers-to-be out there: cite check, cite check, cite check. And read the record. Because whatever the outcome of the case, you want to win the lawyering contest every single time.

A good read.

Because she linked to me, I found this beautiful blog. Wonderful writing about life, travel, parenting, children, Australia, and more. Go see for yourself.

Reasons to ride.

I took my bike out for a spin this morning. Riding before work always makes me feel tough and virtuous in a way that going to the gym or running never does. There's something about suiting up with shoes, helmet, tights, and gloves and hopping on my totally awesome bike at 6:00 a.m. on a weekday that fills me with the pride of being a "real" triathlete (even though I'm really just a weekend warrior wannabe tri-geek).

Tooling along the path, dodging joggers and bike commuters and too-fat urban squirrels and funky early-morning shadows, I drank in the sprinkler-fresh morning air. I also realized that (except for that brief heart-stopping moment when I enter an intersection, having looked both ways but knowing there's just the very slightest chance that a car was lurking in one of my ever-growing blind spots) I see pretty darn well when I'm on my bike. Particularly on a bike path, the popping-into-my-way-unexpectedly opportunities for pedestrians and other cyclists are minimal, and I'm going just fast enough, and sitting at just the right angle, that my field of vision is maximized and I've got a really good view of what's ahead. During my morning runs, I don't really see more than what's right in front of me, and while I do scan from side to side semi-consciously, I'm often lost in thought and not focusing on much of anything. But on the bike, I can see all that's before me and much of what surrounds. Today it was lush trees and spring flowers and birds and puddles and a little construction and a few people and not too many cars.

One more reason to spend more time in the saddle. Given my goal of riding the whole darn way up Old Stage Road on August 8, I need as many of those reasons as I can muster.

The scene of the crime.

As I said yesterday, we spent the weekend smack in the middle of the 137,000 acres of forest that were devastated by the Hayman Fire two years ago. This was the first time I'd visited the burn area since the summer of 2002, when I was down there to look at the fire's point of origin. Because I served on the defense team for the woman accused of starting the fire, the woman who eventually pled guilty to lesser charges and is now serving a federal prison term.

It was a strange feeling to be surrounded by the barren landscape left in the fire's wake. As we drove along the backroads, I could imagine the fire's path as it swept through the trees and underbrush, then found itself halted at various points by human intervention or dearth of fuel before it changed course to cut its devastating swathe elsewhere. At the same time, I saw visible evidence of fire's important role in the forest's natural cycle. Bit by bit, fresh grass is sprouting, wildflowers are blooming, and baby trees are poking their perky branches out of the charred soil. Human restoration efforts are vigorous and ongoing, but nature is running its own course, and the nutrient-laden ash is already doing its part to sustain a new generation of forest life.

Still, I know that the fire cost many people in that area homes and barns and cabins and lots and lots of money. While we in Denver sucked smoky air for days on end, the South Platte locals were living in schoolhouses and churches and friends' places while they waited to see whether their lives would emerge whole when the fire finally stopped burning. So I expect that plenty of folks there hold some antipathy in their hearts towards my former client (though many of her neighbors and colleagues and others in the area remained staunchly and vocally supportive of her throughout the criminal proceedings).

My face was on television almost weekly for the latter half of 2002 and the first part of 2003, and my picture (though usually not my name) popped up in the papers with disturbing regularity. So although my role in the case was relatively minor, I was still a little anxious that someone might recognize me and make the connection. This particular client was one of my favorites, the case was complicated and emotional and fascinating, and I certainly am not embarrassed or ashamed of my involvement in it. But still, traipsing about the area like a happy tourist, I felt a bit like an international jewel thief browsing at Tiffany's.

Big cracks, poo smell, and a slippery slope (or two).

Steve and I headed down to the South Platte this weekend with another couple for some crack climbing (and no, there is NOTHING sexual about that term). That part of the state, though only a bit over an hour from home, has a really remote, rural, western-wildernessy feel to it, and at this time of year is lush and green (except where it looks like a moonscape punctuated only by charred tree trunks, courtesy of the 2002 Hayman Fire, about which I'll post more soon).

After a meat-heavy (for the other three) dinner at a cowboy bar & grill along the way, we reached our cabin not far from the dirt-road hamlet of Westcreek. The place was lovely and cozy and well-equipped. The little "resort" where we stayed apparently had just opened for business when the Hayman Fire tore through the forest and burned the place to the ground, so the cabins are brand-new and the owners are still in the process of rebuilding. Unfotunately for us, it seemed that one of the items under repair was the septic system, so the mountainy-freshness outside was masked by a persistent overlay of poo smell. While this did provide considerable joke fodder, it also put a bit of a damper on our enjoyment of the large decks and the private hot tub.

Steve had scouted the area earlier in the week and warned us to be prepared for a long approach on Saturday. The road up to Turkey Rocks is closed far closer to Westcreek than in previous years because of fire damage and restoration work, leaving us with an two extra miles of schlepping even before starting the steep stretch up to the rocks. The road segment of the trek was tolerable, though I cursed Steve every gravel-laden step of the way for telling me to wear my Chaco Canyon sandals instead of boots. Then we slippy-slid our way up a badly eroded hillside for a stretch, sweating buckets and grabbing charred stumps for balance, then scrambled down over large-but-stable boulders to the climbing area. Whew.

This was my first real crack climbing experience. It's sustained and strenuous and hand-shredding, but loads of fun and really satisfying. We were held up at first by an idiot who spent an hour hanging on his rope trying to dislodge a jammed camming device. He'd stupidly set things up so his rope crossed ours and created the risk that if I started climbing (Steve was already at the top waiting to belay me) our ropes would rub together and get friction-burned. But the day was long and sunny and not too hot, and eventually we were able to climb as much as our muscles and knuckles could take. Around 6:30, we called it a day and gathered our gear for the long walk down.

We decided to take a different path out, apparently a more-used trail that we hoped would prove less precarious than the way in. And it was more stable, but also far, far longer. Despite having barely eaten during the day and feeling the effects of long hours in the sun, we found our inner reserves and pushed on, making the four-mile mostly-uphill hike in a little more than an hour, even with a few oh-shit-is-this-the-right-road? breaks. We fell into the car and somehow made it back to the cabin, where we dragged ourselves into the house and collapsed.

A little food, a little wine, and a little hot-tubbing-with-the-poo-smell later, we were somewhat refreshed though still achy and tired. Still, it was a satisfying day, and we were all looking forward to more climbing on Sunday. Even the next morning, despite our stiff muscles and torn knuckles, we were game to climb.

The boys claimed to have identified the perfect area: on the way home, an easy approach, and lots of moderate climbs at a single base. Fortified by a hearty breakfast, we packed up and headed down the road.

Our first indication that things might not be as anticipated came when the parking areas listed in the climbing book were closed. But we could see the rock, and it looked pretty accessible, so we found an alternative parking spot and decided to make a go of it anyway. We found the trail easily, but as we followed it we realized it was paralleling the road, not taking us any closer to the rock faces we could see towering above us. We decided to bushwhack it up the slope, instantly calling up flashbacks to the previous morning (and me still in my Chacos, dammit). Though we could see the rocks getting larger, we seemed no closer to reaching them, and finally I decided I'd had quite enough. The guys scouted on a little further, while my gal-pal and I headed back down. She and I tracked the trail around in the other direction for a while, thinking it might meet up with the path we were seeking, but it simply meandered along the base of the slope, taking us deeper and deeper into what we suspected was private property.

Finally, we gave up and called it a day. But to top off the South Platte expedition, we managed a stop at the Bucksnort Saloon, in the ramshackle town of Sphinx Park. We sat outside on upturned logs, elbows propped on the wooden spool table, watching the creek bubble below us. The good, cold beer, tasty grub, and mountain atmosphere helped us wrap up the weekend on a high note, despite the day's abortive climbing efforts.

Musta been the briefcase!

Just got back from doing some lawyerly ass-kicking. Armed with my new briefcase, courtesy of the lovely Ms. Fowler, and some really favorable eleventh-hour twists and wrinkles, I managed to get almost everything I asked for and probably everything the judge could (or would) give me at this juncture. Plus some judicial outbursts about the government's incompetence and outrageous treatment of my client -- pure icing.

In this line of work, we learn quickly to take our victories where we find them. I'm counting this one as a win.

Hey la, hey la, my best friend's back!

I'm still way too busy, though the brief is off my desk (and good, I think), but I'm in a state of sheer and total joy. You see, after FOURTEEN long (for me) months of globe-trotting and gallivanting about, my best friend is home at last!

We're talking about my very best friend in the whole wide world. This is the woman I would marry if I was gay and we lived in Massachusetts or Toronto and she wasn't already hitched. The woman who helped me celebrate the taking of the LSATs by streaking along the Boulder Creek Path to the Justice Center at 2:00 in the morning, the woman who once traded Halloween costumes with our male neighbor (hers: sexy genie, his: something dorky involving a white lab outfit) in the bathroom of a bar. The woman whose house keys I once forgot to return before I left for the airport in Paris, nearly forcing me to cause an international incident at DeGaulle, and the woman who agreed, on the spur of the moment, to go to Milan with me (from Denver) just for the weekend. This woman and I once shared an apartment decorated entirely in early parental basement punctuated by strategically placed plastic bulls from bottles of $5 Sangre de Toro. And this is the woman who once helped me finish 2/3 of a bottle of tequila, a flask or two of sake, and an enormous amount of sushi, then pulled me head-first into a bench on the Pearl Street Mall moments before leaving all of the above-mentioned libations in a puddle on the ground.

This is my partner in crime. My bud. The girl I co-chaired all sorts of clubs with in high school, positions we played off one another in order to maximize our ability to ditch school and drink coffee. The chick I played hooky with to go skiing, the craziest mogul-chomping hotdogger in town, and the most fearless adrenaline seeker I know.

We've shared living quarters, piles of books, writing projects, crazed adventures, ridiculous nicknames, endless conversations, a lifetime of laughter, more than our share of tears, and one man (at different times, though with similarly disappointing results).

Her absence has been an omnipresent hole in my world, though her postcards and e-mails and even occasional surprise packages have kept us close and allowed me to share vicariously in her journeys. And now she's back, and all is right in the world again.

Doors opening.

One of my lifers, a man who has been in prison for 25 years, was approved for Community Corrections (halfway house placement) today! This is by far the best client-related news I've received in a while. I can't claim to have had a whole lot of impact on the decision, but it will be a huge relief for the client.

I can only imagine what it will be like for him, a man in his 70s who has spent his prime behind bars, suddenly to have some freedom again. And to reenter society after so long. When he began serving his sentence, Jimmy Carter was President, the Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan, a postage stamp cost fifteen cents, Harrison Ford was a hot young rising star, and the very first rap album had recently been released.

Peter Pan Syndrome.

An e-mail exchange with a friend has me ruminating on life-cycle stuff. We have been discussing how disconcerting it is to find ourselves post-30 and single, with no clear plan for marriage and/or kids, and to realize that while we are still floating along in the limbo of single early-adulthood, our parents are growing older, our grandparents are dying, and we're supposed to be moving into the stable-grownup generational box.

When my mother was the age I am now, she had been married for over a decade and had two children out of diapers. She had her own law practice, a beautiful house, and a happy marriage to my dad, who had recently left academia to become her law partner. They, in their early-to-mid 30s, were Grownups, living solid and stable but still-interesting lives.

Supposedly, 30 is the new 21. Yet I don't feel 21 -- I'm happier, more self-confident, more financially stable, smarter, skinnier, better traveled, less impulsive, and closer to blindness than I was back then. At the same time, while I don't particularly desire to dwell in a never-neverland of eternal youth, I'm not quite ready to be a Grownup, or to be responsible for the health, well-being, or livelihood of anyone other than myself (hell, I can barely keep plants alive). I still depend on my parents for a great deal of emotional support, and I'm not at all prepared to enter the life stage in which I might have to take care of them instead of vice versa.

I supposed I'm getting closer to that place. And regardless of whether I someday become a wife or a mother, I will have to accept the yoke of adulthood with all of its attendant privileges and responsibilities. The best I can hope for may be to retain my youthful good looks in the process. . . .