Today is another day of watching court. Supposedly there are some interesting cases to watch. Certainly, I welcome the 5 weeks or so to watch court and get things straight, but I think if I had to, I could do District Court without screwing up so bad that it really matters so much. I might feel like a dumbass, but that’s short term and nobody’s going to get off because I don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s District Court and High Court here. District Court is DUIs, disturbing the peace, traffic, and other minor things. There are a lot of disturbing the peace here. If you are drunk and yell obscenities in public or even in your house if it is overheard you can be arrested for disturbing the peace. That means if any Husky games are on tv here, I’ll have to watch them in a soundproof chamber.
The rest of the cases go to High Court. Usually, they start out the new guy in District Court until they hire the next new person, then they move up to High Court or to civil cases. I think most civil cases involve chief title successions or communal land disputes. I don’t really know anything about that stuff, and really don’t know how it would help me to know it once I’m back on the mainland, so I’d probably prefer to end up doing High Court criminal cases. I guess in my case, they’re going to have me get familiar with both courts, then handle District Court for a week, and if that goes ok, I’ll go straight to the easiest High Court cases and the District Court lady will stay there. In addition, I have the consumer protection cases- that part is mostly good. I like helping people out that get jacked by The Man. But, it probably also has some people that are just complainers. We shall see.

So this job is certainly not the highest paying attorney job in the world, but people really respect you here. Titles and positions are big here. Chiefs of villages, doctors, and lawyers get a ton of respect here. Everyone who knows what I do already refers to me as Counselor. That’s a respected title. It is crazy really: if any judge was walking around Longview or Seattle, they’d pretty much just be treated as anyone else- and I’m the lowest guy on the totem pole here. Also, I met a judge today; I was in there with another attorney who has been really helping me out to get a search warrant. For one thing, the head lieutenant was there with a police detective. We were just in chambers, not in court. At least in Cowlitz County, that’s a somewhat informal situation. I’m certainly respectful there, but I never called the judge “your honor” while in chambers. Here, the judge certainly didn’t seem to be looking for it, but the cops were completely silent unless they were asked to answer a question by the judge and they prefaced each sentence with “your honor”. This is only my 4th day, but so far, this looks like a good situation. My boss looks like and seems kind of like Hunter S. Thompson, but without the drugs.

Supposedly, I will get to move into my new place today. We shall see. I actually give it about 40%. It’d be nice to get in there, but if not, I can wait another day.

On a sad note, I saw that the stupid cougs beat UW for the 4th time in a row. That is really not good. Not good for the obvious reason, but also because now the Huskies pretty much have to: 1. Beat Pitt away or 2. not lose any more pac-10 games or 3. win the pac-10 tournament. That is not so good (borat voice).

The pictures today are from Tuesday of the Queen Mary 2. It’s the largest cruise ship ever built I think. Traffic was JACKED getting into town Tuesday. There’s really not that many cars here, but there also are way less roads. I’d say there are about 75% as many people here as in Cowlitz County. I’m guessing there are about 20% as many cars as CC. But, I’m guessing there are about 4% as many roads. Plus, the max speed limit here is 25 mph. If I remember, I’ll try to include some pictures of my drive to work. Very nice, I like (borat again).

Spring Training starts in what, 2 weeks? So when I’m in my office, I can watch it on gamecast . So a 7pm eastern time game would start a 1, and noon once EDT starts. Fantastic. No Ron Fairly or Dave Henderson: wicked awesome. Not being able to take advantage of it sucks.