Dear Blog

Dear Blog,

I know I’ve been absent lately, but you have to understand that my world has just been a whirlwind of activity. If I would’ve had time, I would have told you about how I’m going through finals, how I’m going to Austin to see the Zimels in a week, and how Drew’s baseball team is 4-0 and beating teams by an average of 20 runs per game. But for now, you’ll just have to be patient. There isn’t anyone else (O.K., I guess there is that other blog that I occasionally write for, but they pay me for that I haven’t posted there for a long time either). Hopefully to tide you over until I get back to my regular posting schedule, I’ll post a few pics…

JW

Dear John...

Dear John,

I’ve been meaning to write this letter for quite awhile. I just hardly know where to begin. It seems like things just aren’t the same between us anymore. You used to visit with me two and sometimes three times per week. You’d share insights, post pictures, or link to interesting news stories. And know we haven’t had contact in several weeks. Is there someone else? Was it something I did? I feel like you’ve lost that loving feeling and I need to know what I can do to get it back.

Please write soon. I’ll be here for you. Just waiting.

Your blog

On a more serious note...

Generally I keep the content on this blog pretty light, but here is a thought I had today while driving to school:

When are we, as a society, going to once and for all put racism behind us? What is it going to take? We fought a Civil War over this issue over a century ago; we experienced a tumultuous period in the Civil Rights Era over a half-century ago, but issues still persist. When are people finally going to be truly colorblind?

The two stories that really got me thinking about this was the disgraceful comments made by radio host Don Imus in reference to African-American female basketball players at Rutgers and the Duke lacrosse case. Both of these situations were absolutely horrible, albeit each for different reasons. I won't go into an analysis of each situation - there are countless other places where you can find that on the Internet - but I will say that it saddens me that our society can't seem to overcome this tremendously important issue.

Catching up...

It has been quite awhile since I lasted posted a blog, and the primary reason for the slowdown has been an increase in my "busyness." I feel like the last few weeks have just flown by, and I'm sure this pattern will continue for the next few as well. We are heading into the exam season here at the Law School, so its likely that the blog postings will continue to be scarce for awhile. Besides studying for finals, I am also preparing the journal competition, which allows all Oregon Law students (second and third-years) to compete for membership on Oregon Law Review or the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation. This is a time-consuming, but extremely important job. Let's just say I can't wait until May 5 when our family hops on a plane for Austin to see the Zimels.

Here are some recent pictures for your viewing pleasure...


We built a "jet" for Drew and he was "flying" all around fighting the enemy. All of the stuff on the table is the equipment that jets have in their cockpits.

I love the look of intensity in this picture. He is saving the world. And making sound effects at the same time.


"What's that look for Sam?"


Lookin' sharp Drew!


Sam and her good friend Chloe


You can't tell me that there are very many things cuter than little girls in their Easter dresses.


We hid eggs EVERYWHERE!


Drew found one of the special "Golden Eggs." He was very proud of it.


Drew and Sam on Easter


Missi and I on Easter. We tried to get Zeke to look at the camera, but he was having nothing to do with it.


The fam...

Check this out

I thought these pictures were pretty cool. Click on "Running the Numbers - An American Self-Portrait."

East Coast Trip

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Wilmington, Delaware waiting to go home tomorrow morning. It has been a good trip but I'm definitely ready to get back to Eugene. I miss my wife and kids, and I miss being in a familiar place. When I leave tomorrow morning I will have been away almost six days, which has been a long time. Here is a brief recap.

Wednesday:
A tough day of travel. Eugene to Salt Lake City to Atlanta to Wilmington, Delaware. Arrived only to find that my luggage hadn't made the trip along with me. That was frustrating. A $60 cab ride to the hotel later, we finally got settled in.

Thursday:
I spent most of the day trying to find my luggage, but I wasn't having much luck because there are only two inbound flights to the Wilmington airport. We had an orientation meeting for the competition, and thankfully Ash and Ryan were able to argue the first round that night.

Friday:
I learned that my luggage finally made it to the hotel sometime during the night, so I actually had some clothes to change into. I argued in both rounds this morning, but we had been selected to argue off-brief, which was the much more difficult argument to make. We did pretty well, but we were also up against some tough competition. On Friday night, Widener Law School had a banquet for us, which was pretty fun. We learned that we weren't among the eight teams that were to advance to the next round, which gave us two days to decide what to do.

Saturday:
I rented a car from perhaps the most incompetent Enterprise office in the country, and we headed north to explore. It is always a bit intimidating to drive in a strange region, and we decided to take off sans maps, so it wasn't really a coincidence when we took a wrong turn and ended up in Philadelphia instead of New York. We had lunch in Philly (I broke my vegetarian eating habits to eat a Philly cheesesteak). We explored around a bit and then got back on the New Jersey Turnpike and headed to New York. We had contemplated taking the train into Manhattan, but I decided to just try to drive and park somewhere. We definitely ran into a lot of traffic heading into the Holland Tunnel, but we finally made it into Manhattan and we parked as soon as we could. After buying a slice of New York pizza, we bought a MetroCard and tried to figure out the subway system. We checked out Times Square and Ground Zero and looked around for several hours before eating dinner at the ESPN Zone to watch some basketball. Later that night we met up with a friend of Ash's who has a place in Chelsea. We hung out with him for awhile (playing Wii) before heading back to the car. We finally made it back to the hotel around 3:30AM.

Sunday:
After the late night/early morning, we all slept in. Ash and I went to the final round of the competition, which was argued in front of the Delaware Supreme Court. It was interesting to see that one of the teams we had argued against in the second round had progressed to the finals. The level of oral advocacy was certainly good, but I wouldn't classify it as outstanding. The questions from the Justices were very challenging, and it was fun to watch. The team from Florida State University School of Law ended up winning. We retired to the hotel to watch the Oregon-Florida basketball game and then went to get some dinner. Now we're back at the hotel and packing up for tomorrow's early morning wake-up call. Our plane leave at 7:15 and then it is back through Atlanta, then on to Seattle and finally back to Eugene.

It has been a good, albeit long, trip. I feel like I've learned a lot about corporate law and I've been able to see some sights I haven't seen before. I'm thankful that my school makes opportunities like this available to law students.

Here are some black and white photos taken on the trip. They aren't the best quality as they were taken on my Treo, but you can get the idea.


Widener University was founded over 25 years before Oregon even achieved statehood!

Ash and Ryan walking toward the Widener School of Law

Philly architecture

The iconic "love" sign in the city of brotherly love.

New York pizza

Ash liked the local cuisine

Ground Zero

Display at Ground Zero. It was a pretty somber scene, even now over five years removed.

Ground Zero

Playing Wii tennis in West Chelsea



Ash waiting for the subway. Sorry Ryan, the pic of you didn't turn out.


Kids dancing for money in the subway station (video below)

Times Square

Times Square

Waiting for the final round to begin in the moot courtroom at Widener University School of Law

Final round in front of the Delaware Supreme Court

How 'bout those Ducks?

Great job by the Oregon Ducks men's basketball team for their run in the NCAA tournament. They made it to the Elite Eight where they were knocked out by defeding-champs Florida. They played Florida tough even though I think Florida was the better team. It was a great season!

Leavin'...on a jet plane

I'm heading out of town tomorrow, and I wish I could say that I was going to some exotic Spring Break destination like Cancun or Hawaii. To the contrary. I am going to Widener School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware to compete in the Ruby Vale Corporate Law Moot Court Competition. I haven't ever been to Delaware before so it will be good to see that part of the country, but it is hard to be away from my family for six days!

More to follow later...

Vegas Recap

I returned from Vegas on Sunday night and it was a pretty great trip. We didn’t have too much time to do the whole “Vegas” thing, but the competition was a really valuable experience and my partner and I did well. If you don’t remember, I went to Las Vegas as a representative of my law school to compete in the regional National Appellate Advocacy moot court competition. Teams can be made up of either two or three students (most schools seem to send teams of three) and Oregon sent two two-person teams. We’ve been practicing for this for over the past two months. My partner was Matt Lehman, another 2L. There were two issues that we were arguing: one was a Fourth Amendment search/seizure issue and the other was a question of judicial discretion afforded by the Sentencing Reform Act and whether shaming punishments are permissible. I was arguing on the sentencing issue, but the competition requires teams to argue as both petitioner and respondent.

We arrived Thursday and really just dropped off our luggage at the hotel and headed to the federal courthouse. We stayed at the Alexis Park Resort, which sounds much nicer than it really was. Our cable was always turning off, the water pressure was really weak, the AC seemed to have a mind of its own, etc…I think the American Bar Association chose it because it was a non-gaming resort, which is a rarity in Vegas. At the courthouse we attended a team meeting where they explained the competition format and rules. We also found out our brief score, which was a very respectable 83/100 (the highest brief score turned out to be 86). This gave us a good feeling and definitely an advantage heading into the oral argument rounds as our brief was to count as 33% of our total score per round. On Thursday night we faced two women from UC Berkley. They were pretty good but Matt and I felt like we had won. Given this, we were surprised to find out that they had beat us on the oral argument portion. Fortunately our brief score was much higher than theirs and carried us to the win. Friday night our team from U of O went to the Hard Rock for dinner.

On Friday, we had a majority of the day to prepare/relax. We met as a team for a few hours, got some lunch, and headed over to the courthouse. On Friday night we took on UNLV who ostensibly had a “home court advantage.” Fortunately for us, their team wasn’t that great and we beat them with a wide margin of victory that padded our ranking. At the urging of one of our teammates, we hit The Mirage’s buffet that night, and it was pretty good. I’m pretty sure I didn’t eat or drink $25 worth of food or beverages, but it was a good experience.

Saturday morning was round three and we were paired against another 2-0 team. Out of 36 teams, we were ranked third and UCLA was ranked tenth. This was also the last round that our brief score was to count towards our point total. Both Matt and I didn’t feel great about our performances, but we managed to win, which sent us into the semi-finals, where we would be arguing without the advantage of our brief score.

In Round 4 we faced two women from Arizona State University. We were respondent again, and after hearing them argue, we knew we were up for a stiff challenge. Fortunately Matt and I improved on our earlier performances and defeated them, which sent us into the finals.

In the Finals we were facing a team from Hastings Law School. The other team from Oregon had faced this team earlier in the competition and had been beaten pretty soundly, so we knew that we were going to have a tough time. After they won the coin toss, they thankfully selected to argue as petitioner, which allowed Matt and I to argue as respondent for the third time that day! This certainly allowed us to hone our arguments and not make the difficult mental shift from one side of the case to the other. After hearing both of our opponents present their arguments, it was clear that they posed our biggest challenge. Unfortunately for both teams, we only had a two-judge panel, rather than the three judge panels we had received in Rounds 1-4. The two-judge panel meant a lot fewer questions, which in turn forces the advocate to speak in a narrative fashion (monologue) for a long time. Although this seems counterintuitive, most advocates (myself included) prefer to think on their feet and answer questions rather than attempt to just deliver a persuasive speech.

They didn’t tell us who won the round until later that night at an Awards Ceremony. Hastings ended up winning by just a few points and so they are on to Nationals in Chicago. One of the judges had us dead even, while the other gave a slight edge to Hastings. I’m sure if our brief score had counted we would have won. The Awards Ceremony proved fruitful for a few other reasons. Out of the 36 teams who were there, they award small cash prizes for the five best briefs. Matt and I won $100 for being the fifth best brief in the competition. The competition also honors the ten best oral advocates. They take the two best individual scores from the first four rounds to arrive at the average. Fortunately I had received a 94 and a 91 in two previous rounds and so I was honored as fifth best oral advocate out of the 80 or 90 so law students who were there.

Saturday night we knew we were done with the competition so we wanted to get out and experience Vegas. We had dinner at Caesar’s Palace and then made our way to the Venetian, Bellagio, Treasure Island, Paris, and New York New York. Unfortunately there were also about 40,000 other NASCAR fans who wanted to “experience Vegas” too. They were all in town for the NASCAR Las Vegas 400. While it made for good people-watching, it didn’t make it very easy to get around anywhere. The crowds, when mixed with a good splash of exhaustion from a long, mentally-challenging day, rendered a recipe for an early evening. I was probably back in our hotel by 1:00AM, which thanks to the earlier daylight savings time, was really 2:00AM. I had to wake up by 7:00 to pack and head to the airport.

Despite all this, it was a great time and a great experience. I definitely feel more capable as an advocate and I was able to bond with some of my classmates at a level that wouldn’t have happened without this competition. I’m glad to be finished with the Tuesday/Thursday practices, but I certainly won’t look back with any hint of regret on these few paragraphs in the story of my life.

Only in Eugene

File these two under "Only in Eugene"

1. I went to my favorite bakery the other morning to get a scone. They always offer the marionberry scone, but they also have a rotating "special." I almost always go for the special because I really like the variety. On this particular morning, the little sign describing the type of scone said "Goji Berry." I feel like I've got a decent handle on the different berries typically used in baking, but I had never heard of the Goji Berry. When I asked the baker what it was, she said, "The Goji Berry is from Nepal and it is just packed with antioxidants. It's really huge on the health food circuit right now." So, I had a Goji Berry scone and it was OK. Here's some more info on the Goji Berry (also known as Wolfberry!).

2. I was driving behind this guy today and when the light turned red I had to ask him to take a picture of his bike trailer. Only in Eugene do you see a guy pulling a trailer FULL OF LUMBER. This is taking eco-sensitivity to the extreme. I asked the rider if he had made the trailer himself, and he told me that he purchased it from Bikes at Work and that the trailer was capable of hauling a half ton of lumber!





Only in Eugene do you get unique experiences like these!

Reflections...

It occurs to me that there are very few instances in life where you can think to yourself, “I’m about to experience something that I probably will never forget.” Some of the situations that would likely fall into this category is the feeling you have just before your wedding or as you are driving to the hospital to welcome a child into your family.

Now, that being said, I’m not getting married tomorrow or having a child, but I do think that it will be hard to forget the experience tomorrow will bring. As some of you know, I’ve been practicing hard for the National Appellate Advocacy Competition. I was fortunate enough to win the intraschool competition, and as a result I’m traveling to Las Vegas next week to compete against other law schools. But tomorrow I’m going to Salem to have a practice round in front of several Justices of the Oregon Supreme Court. Our volunteer coach is a staff attorney with the Oregon Court of Appeals and he asked if we could use the Oregon Supreme Court’s courtroom for our final “formal” practice rounds. We will be arguing in front of Justices Rives Kistler, Martha Walters, and Virginia Lindner. I’m arguing a Sentencing Reform Act issue for the petitioner, a college student who was sentenced with a condition requiring him to pass out flyers bearing his picture and a description of his offense. We argue that such a “scarlet letter” condition does not comport with the judicial discretion afforded sentencing judges under the Sentencing Reform Act.

Who knows if I’ll ever get to argue a “real” case in front of the Oregon Supreme Court, but tomorrow will give me a good taste of what it might be like. And it certainly won’t be something I’ll forget anytime soon.

An open letter...

Dear Jeff,
Thank you for getting tickets for my wife and I to go watch The Fray on July 26. We are very excited.
John and Missi

So much to catch up on...

I feel like I've got enough material swirling around in my head for about five blog posts, but unfortunately time constraints limit me to just a "weekend recap."

Thursday Night - Drew and the rest of his first-grade homies put on "Dancing Around the World." It was great. You haven't lived until you've seen your child perform in a school program (with an added bonus that we got to see him dance a little French jig to Frere Jacques and some sort of Israeli/Jewish dance). What was Drew's speaking part in the program? "Did you know that the water of the Dead Sea is so dense from salt that people can float in it without even trying?" We are so proud.

Friday - Our office officially moved into the new federal courthouse. If you think moving a family is a pain, increase that frustration/chaos by about tenfold for an office move.

Friday Night - Missi and I attended the Oregon Law Students Public Interest Fund Benefit Auction at the law school. It was a really great time!

Saturday - We just kind of hung around, did housework, relaxed, took naps, etc...It was nice to be together as a family for a lazy Saturday.

Saturday Night - One of my best friends in the world came down to Eugene with his girlfriend to watch the Ducks - Huskies basketball game. We had dinner at our house first and then made it over to Mac Court. The energy in the building was INTENSE because of the rivalry between the two schools. Fortunately the Ducks were able to pull it off. After the game we had some amazing dessert at Sweet Life. Later that evening we went to Rennie's to meet up with my friends Mike and Cassidy who had come down to Eugene for the game. There are few things better than being able spend time with some of your truest friends.

Sunday - We went to church, watched Garden State (maybe a 6/10), and then celebrated our anniversary. We went to the mall together, got pedicures together, and then had a great dinner at this new restaurant here in Eugene. It's called Bates' Steakhouse and it has this Westernish feel to it, but it's really great. It was a really nice evening reminiscing over our seven years of marriage and looking toward the future.

Here are a couple of pictures:



Jeff and Meghan



Me and my better half

Day in the life...

I've been struggling with posting entries lately so I thought I'd just post my schedule for today.

SCHEDULE FOR THURSDAY 2/22/07

6:00 AM - Wake up, feed the dog, try to stealthily sneak out of the house to avoid waking up the fam
7:00 AM - Play two games in the Legal Basketball Association (LBA). Our team (The Litigators) was 2-0 today against Quasi-in-Rim and The Rainmakers!
8:30 AM - Go to work at the U.S. Attorneys Office
8:45 - 11:45 AM - Work (packing up boxes in preparation for our office's move to the new federal courthouse)
11:45 AM - Drive to the law school
12:00 AM - Moot Court Board meeting
1:00 - 2:15 PM - Legal Profession class
2:30 4:20 PM - Business Associations class
4:45 PM - Drive home to the fam, eat dinner, play with the kids, etc...
7:00 - 8:30 PM - Go to my son's first grade school program ("Dance Around the World")
9:00 - 11:00 PM - Study, work on writing a paper

Recent Pictures and a Video of Zeke

He's growing so fast!

The Latest Chapter from “Kid’s Say the Darnedest Things”

So Drew and I are at the grocery store on Saturday morning and we are walking through the meat section. Drew turns to me and says, “Dad, it says they have sliced LION back there! Can you believe that?” As a matter of fact, no, I couldn’t believe that, so I turned the cart back around to see what he had read and do you know what it said? “Sliced Pork LOIN”. Ah, what a difference a letter makes…

3 Things

1. Quote for the day: "Lawyers are sort of like sausage: You don’t really want to see either of them being made…"

2. This, this, and this sickens me. How can stuff like this still happen in this day and age?

3. Thanks for the comment Amber-Rose. Glad I'm not the only person with a "misspelled word" pet peeve.

Ah...the glamorous life I lead

Here's what I'm looking at right now:




I think more than anything, this post is a memorialization of the fact that I really don't have a life, and I think I'm OK with that. Here I am at 10:45PM on a Friday night in the journal office working on editing an article discussing qualified immunity for police officers.

Why I am at school this late on a Friday night? Well, my entire fam is up in Portland for a few days, and that, combined with the fact that I have a really busy week next week, was my motivation for being here to work. The way I figure it, the more I work now the more, the less I have to work when my wife, kids, and dog get back home.

Currently listening to: Josh Ritter - Golden Age of Radio