In the words of Napoleon Dynamite…

...that was flippin’ sweet experience. As I may have previously mentioned here, I have the distinct privilege as serving as Operations Editor for Oregon Law Review. What’s that you ask? “What does an Operations Editor do?”

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Basically I handle the finances of the journal, I act as a disciplinarian when needed, and I organize a few big events (the journal competition, orientation, elections, end-of-the-year banquet, etc…).

But back to the flippin’ sweet experience. I recently took on the responsibility of planning a symposium issue for OLR that will celebrate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Oregon Constitution (that’s 150 years and still goin’ strong baby!). Anyway, I’m working with a few judges and members of the Oregon State Bar Constitutional Law Section to get this thing off the ground, and as a result, I had to drive up to Salem yesterday for a meeting. We were just making the initial introductions in the lobby of the building when I was interested to “Hans Linde.” As I picked my jaw up off the floor, these thoughts ran through my head: “What?! Is that really THE Hans Linde? The architect of the Linde Revolution? And he’s going to be working on this project with us?!”

Why was I so excited? Well, for the uninitiated, Hans Linde is one of the GIANTS of Oregon jurisprudence. He was a Justice on the Oregon Supreme Court from 1977–1990 and is credited with authoring some monumental decisions and fundamentally reshaping much of Oregon law. An apt analogy might be to call him the “Earl Warren” of the Oregon Supreme Court (or perhaps Warren should be called the “Hans Linde” of Supreme Court!). Anyway, he had been invited to this meeting through a mutual friend and I sat rapt for the next 90 minutes as he discussed his views on the current state of the Oregon Constitution. Although he is advancing in years, he clearly has his full mental capacities, and his reformist philosophy is still very evident. To make things even better, we were joined in the meeting by two current judges on the Oregon Court of Appeals so there was, as my colleague from OLR put it, significant “intellectual firepower” sitting around this table.

It was truly an honor to meet and converse with this “living legend” and I look forward to our next meeting. I’m going to try to resist the temptation to have him sign a copy of the Oregon Constitution.

Anniversary!

On Monday night, Missi and I celebrated our eighth anniversary! I can’t tell you that every single moment of our marriage has been roses, but I am proud of the fact that we’ve made it this far and that our commitment to each other is strong. I’m blessed to be married to an amazing woman who is incredibly supportive of me and is an excellent mom to our kids.

The idea for the evening was to do something like a “scavenger hunt” of sorts. I gave Missi various “clues” throughout the evening about what we were going to be doing. I also tried to give her a few smaller gifts to symbolize those qualities of hers that I really appreciate and love (for example, I gave her a “clue” that said, “I love being active with you.” and the gift was a pair of soccer socks and indoor soccer shoes. We play on the same co-ed indoor soccer team).

Anyway, one of the first clues said: “One of the things I like about you is that anytime we talk about the Oregon Ducks, you light up like an electric light bulb. And I’m also glad that I’ve never had to bail you out of a police station.” What does this gibberish mean? Well, if you read it carefully, and if you know Eugene restaurants very well, you might be able to figure out that three of the words hidden in these sentences are “Oregon” and “electric” and “station.” That’s right…we went to the Oregon Electric Station for dinner.

After dinner, I gave Missi a clue that said I was always “bowled over by her beauty.” That took us to Southtowne Lanes for bowling. We finished up the evening with a stop at our favorite dessert place – Sweet Life. It was a great evening!

Missi gave me a sweet pair of Nike sunglasses as a gift. The lens are removable so here I am looking like a dork (what’s new?).


Here we are at dinner:

Here we are bowling:


Look at that technique displayed by Missi and I! Even The Dude would be proud!



We didn’t exactly break any records with our bowling scores. Based on this performance, we should probably stick to Wii bowling.

Ah yes, the requisite self-portraits in the car at the end of the night.

Ah yes...I remember International Shoe

Here I am in my third year of law school, a mere two months or so from graduating, and just recently I found myself citing to a case that we studied back when we were fledgling law students trying to figure out how to “brief” a case or figure out what the “procedural posture” was. I’m taking this awesome class called Federal Judicial Settlements, taught by United States Magistrate Judge Tom Coffin, and I was working on drafting up a settlement letter for a contract dispute between two nursery suppliers. (No, not that type of nursery. That type of nursery). Anyway, one of the companies is from Oregon and one is from Arizona. The Arizona company is asserting that the federal court here in Oregon doesn’t have “personal jurisdiction” over it. In responding to their argument (I’m representing the Oregon company), I actually cited to the “minimum contacts test set forth in International Shoe v. Washington. This case is one of “the biggies” – taught by every Civil Procedure prof at every law school in the country. I just found it funny that here I am, nearly at the end of my time at law school, referring back to stuff that I studied in my first few months here in Eugene. Everything goes full circle!

Deja Vu All Over Again

A few years ago, before we moved to Eugene, my dad and I worked together to build this "activity box" for Drew. The idea was to give him different activities on each side of the box to develop his mechanical skills while he had fun. It was supposed to also be an alternative to a lot of the cheap plastic toys that he was playing with that annoyed me. To make a long story short, my dad and I spent a lot of time designing the thing, buying supplies for it, building it, and painting it primary colors. We presented it to Drew and he never really go into it. Sure, he played with it from time to time, but it never really caught his attention the way I had hoped. Well, I've kept the thing out in my shed for the last few years, mainly for sentimental reasons, and last week Samantha found it and asked me to take it out. Well, she has just LOVED the activity box and has been playing with it quite a bit the last week or so. Here are a few pictures of her playing with it (you can tell that the velcro strip I added is beginning to fall off).

And yes, Sam is wearing her mom's knee boots in these pictures. She is her mother's daughter!

The fam at Mac Court

This actually happened a few weeks ago (on Valentine's Day, to be precise), but I've been sort of slacking on updating the blog. We took the kids to a basketball game between the Duck and Washington Huskies at Mac Court. It was a really fun time, made even better by the fact that the Ducks won!


The fam before the game

My girls

Drew looks a bit apprehensive in this picture

Sam was totally engrossed with the game, as you can see by this picture of her painting her nails.

I'm experiencing a bunch of "lasts"

As I prepare for my graduation from law school by filling out my "application for degree" and request for commencement tickets, etc...I'm having a hard time realizing that I will be done with law school in about 2 months!

You know how sometimes you become really accustomed to a certain habit or a certain lifetstyle? That is definitely how I feel about law school and I'm not sure how excited I am to be leaving this "comfort zone."

I titled this short blog post "I'm experiencing a bunch of 'lasts'" because I'm realizing that I will be getting my last student tickets for a Ducks basketball game soon, and I'm playing in my last season of the Legal Ballers Association, and so on...

Of course, the flip-side to this is that I will soon be able to say that I am experiencing a bunch of "firsts."

Answer to the Trivia Question

If you haven't figured it out yet, the answer to the previously posted trivia question is that "Dr. Awkward" is a palindrome, or a phrase that can be spelled exactly the same way forwards or backwards.

Here are a few other fun and well-known palindromes.

A man, a plan, a canal—Panama!

Madam, in Eden I'm Adam.

Del saw a sled.

Racecar

Look at these gems from the WSJ

One of my frequent off-ramps when I'm cruising the Information Superhighway is the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. The blog is well-written and I almost always find something interesting related to the practice of law. Here are two gems I found today:

A recent lawyer joke John McCain has been using on the campaign trail:

What is the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?

One is a scum sucking bottom dweller. The other is a fish.

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And check out this awesome entry about a federal circuit court judge:

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It’s not often that a former judicial clerk breaks silence to dish on his old boss. After all, Ed Lazarus, a former Harry Blackmun clerk, caught some flack when he published his Supreme Court tell-all. We don’t have anything that salacious for you today. But we’re practically crapulous with joy to see that, in this week’s National Law Journal, Frederick Brodie has penned a rodomontade asseverating the talents of First Circuit Judge Bruce Selya, Brodie’s former boss. Brodie, now a litigation partner at Pillsbury Winthrop, has compiled a salmagundi of Selya’s legendary vocabulary words, most of which are, to say the least, ultracrepidarian to our pedestrian knowledge.

In a “Guide to Selyaisms,” Brodie writes that Judge Selya, who has authored more than 1,250 federal opinions, is well-known for working into his opinions selections from his “arcane vocabulary, which has provoked frequent head scratching by counsel.”

Law Blog readers, here are some of Selya’s best head-scratchers, courtesy of Brodie. See if you can work one into a brief, a memo, an email, or even better, a client conversation.

Defenestration. Don’t walk past an open window if Selya is inside writing an opinion: He is liable to defenestrate anything and everything. Items thrown out the window in Selya opinions include speedy trial claims, punitive damages awards, arbitral awards, claims of co-fiduciary liability and laws that unduly favor in-state interests. The latter, Selya has noted, “routinely will be defenestrated under the dormant commerce clause.”

Philotheoparoptesism. Philotheoparoptesism refers to the practice of disposing of heretics by burning them or boiling them in oil. Another judge challenged Selya to include this word in a decision, which resulted in its sole reported usage (in secular courts, at least). For the record, Selya declined to consign a misguided prosecutor “to the juridical equivalent of philotheoparoptesism.”

Repastinate. To repastinate means to plow the same ground a second time. When considering appeals that raise previously decided issues, Selya and his colleagues have come down firmly and repeatedly on the side of “no repastination.”

Sockdolager. A sockdolager is a final, decisive blow. Selya’s published opinions deliver almost 60 sockdolagers, which is more “sock” than one finds in the decisions of the rest of the federal judiciary.

Thaumaturgical. The 1st Circuit takes a dim view of magical arguments, or what in one opinion Selya called “thaumaturgical feat[s] of rhetorical prestidigitation.”

Trivia Question

What is unique about this title?

Dr. Awkward

Gone fishin'

Yesterday I took the kids to the Eugene Sportsmen's Show because I had heard that there was going to be a kid's trout pond there. I haven't really taken the time to describe our family's recent fishing experiences, but let's just say that we have been pretty into "wetting a line" lately but we haven't really caught anything. So, the prospect of virtually guaranteeing that each kid was going to catch something was exciting to me. I went with my friend Ben and his two kids, Aiden and Chloe.

Drew caught a fish in the first five minutes and he was totally into it. Sam took some persuading, but she eventually became interested and she was ecstatic when she caught a fish after about 20 minutes or so.


Drew is pretty excited after catching his fish.


Here is one of the fish we caught (and brought back home, much to Missi's shock). It isn't really one of the whoppers that they catch up in Alaska where my sister lives, but it was still a fun experience.


Q: "Hey Sam, how big was your fish?" A: "It was THIS BIG!"

Here is short video of Sam after she caught her fish. Notice that she is literally bouncing she is so excited.

Checking in...

It has been a few days since I've managed to update my blog, mainly because I've been really busy at school, which is where I write most of my blog posts. I have a few posts that I want to add, but for today I am just going to add this photo that I found really funny for some odd reason. Have a great day.