Storms

The predictions started last week sometime.  Epic snowfall.

It's supposed to start tonight.

What's really large snowfall is open to debate.  I'm pretty skeptical.  Seems like in predictions, it's always going to be huge. Sometimes it really is. We had one last year, for example, that was.  

My prediction is that this one won't be.

I went out on the back deck and looked to the west anyway, the direction storms nearly always come from around here. The sky was dark, the air was calm, and it wasn't really cold.  Not that unusual for this time of year.

In another entry, I posted an item about a really funny article written in the local bar journal.  It's hilarious.

The same issue has an article about a recently appointed circuit court judge in another city whose also an author.  He's written and published several books.  Good for him.

The article has sort of sat a little heavy on my consciousness, however, as I read it and I'm probably a little envious, or jealous, assuming the same isn't exactly the same thing, or even slightly upset in a way that I ought not to be.

The judge is a recent appointee.  He's been practicing about half the time I have, having had a twenty-year military career before he went to law school.  I don't know where he's from, but it's not here.  Anyhow, after twenty years in the military, he took retirement, which you can do in the military system.  It's not full retirement, I'd note, but you get a percentage of your highest career pay as your retirement pay.  It's a system designed to encourage early retirement, actually, as the service needs a continual supply of young agile soldiers who can be described that way both mentally and physically.  You have to take retirement at age 60, in the service, if you are still in.

Anyhow, an officer who retires after twenty years is usually in his 40s, still young enough for a second career, and that's what this veteran did.  He went to law school, clerked a little after that, was in private practice a little, and became a circuit court judge.  His kids are grown and he's always had an interest in writing, so he started writing novels, based on legal themes, and several have been published.

So what's the problem?

Well, there isn't one, really, save in my view of things, which is likely wrong.

At one point in my career I would like to have become a judge too, and was often encouraged to apply.  Now I'm too old, so I stopped.  Having said that, a person can't expect such an appointment as they're rare anyway you look at it.  It'd be like a Priest expecting to become a Bishop, or a City Councilman expecting to become a Senator.  Yes, it occurs, but those stories are very much the exception to the rule.

None of which keeps you from hoping for it.

Now, I can't complain.  I've had a super busy practice and as a long time lawyer friend of mine recently noted, and I've heard many other litigators note before, we get into a lot of very interesting things.  Most lawyers who do this kind of worth are polymaths, to be sure, and litigation suits a polymath in many ways.  You get to study a lot of things and get paid for it which, as my colleague noted, we'd probably study anyway, if we ran across the topic.

Still, it's disappointing to hold a goal and not meet it, and he's holding two of them.  Judge and author.

Now, I'm an author, but I haven't had time, or at least I think I haven't had time, to finish my novel.  

No, I really haven't had time.  I worked all day yesterday, Sunday, in order to meet a deadline, and that isn't uncommon at all.  

Well, those are the breaks really, and a person can't really complain about them rationally  It's not like if you got to be a major league baseball player the breaks operated so that you never made the Hall of Fame, and you have a rational compliant, for example.

And part of the overall situation is that ultimately the Governor appoints the individuals who are the finalist, after the committee appoints a finalist.  I've never made the finalists, but I thought a few of the lawyers who did make it were shoe ins, only to find that the Governor didn't look at things the way that I did.

In some of those instances, you could discern why or, in the case of Governor Mead, he was clear about his Judicial appointment agenda, and he did have one.  He made that plain.  In other instances the reasons were less clear, but you could sort of puzzle them out, and they weren't all the same.  And too, the various nomination committee  have sometimes had a philosophy or view themselves.  One former member flat out told a colleague of mine that she wished civil litigators would quit applying as she felt they didn't need a career advancement while other lawyers did, an interesting way to look at it.

Anyhow, it's not my call, and really none of my business.  Clearly the judge is a multitalented guy of diverse experience. Still, it's an odd thing if your age is more or less the same, but your experience about double, and you know that you wouldn't have made the cut, as that wouldn't have really mattered.

The Game & Fish has been tormenting me recently.

Again, not intentionally.

Their recent electronic newsletter has been featuring wardens and others on horseback.

I've often wondered why they haven't used horses more, but to ponder that requires a knowledge of horses.  For rural looking about, they can't be beat.

Anyhow, one of the things I've always admired about ranchers is that they spend their lives around animals.  Other occupations still do to varying extent, and at one time people who worked in the sticks did.  They still have a lot of uses out there and are underused. . . horses that is.

Anyhow, as also noted here, at one time, and that time would be decades ago, I pondered becoming a game warden and didn't.  I'm not the only lawyer who pondered that, which must be that polymath thing again.  Anyhow, when working long hours and weekends, seeing people working, with horses, well it helps sort of irritate you a bit when  you read about less legally experienced lawyers being appointed to the bench and having time to write books.

It probably ought not to.

At least it's not Denver.

I'm going to be super vague, but I got a look at that big-city practice recently, remotely, and from the outside.  Lawyers with super credentials and the like.

Indeed, years ago I went to a deposition in Denver with a lawyer from Wyoming who had been hugely successful in the law.  He retired to Hawaii, and unfortunately he died relatively young.  Anyhow, during a noon break I went down to the Tattered Cover. When we came back, he asked me what I'd done over the noon hour and I told him.  He told me he'd speant the hours wandering around downtown observing people.

And then he observed, "Everyone around here looks like somebody is jamming a stick up their ass all the time.".

Frankly, the lives of some of the urban successful can suck, and they have the visage of people whose lives suck.  This isn't true of everyone.  I have several friends who are lawyers in Denver, and its not true for them.  I really like them and admire their skill, but they do the same sort of work that I do.  But the really "LA Law" or "Boston Legal" type practice.  Ick.  

Which serves as a reminder that society at large, which so admires that sort of career path ambition, wants your life to suck.